Optical and Radio emission from BL Lac objects: long-term trends and structural changes

Abstract

Optical light curves of bright BL Lac objects, in particular those having the SED synchrotron peak at frequencies lower than 10E14 Hz, are characterized by long-term trends with time scales of a few decades. These variations are probabily not related to fast perturbations moving down the jet, which have a much faster evolution, but more likely to slow changes of other physical or geometrical parameters, for example the jet direction. In these cases we can expect changes of the inner jet structure detectable with VLBI imaging. Recent literature results are reviewed and discussed in this context.