Structure Function Analysis of AGN Variability using Kepler
Abstract
We study the variability properties of AGN light-curves observed by the Kepler satellite. AGN optical fluxes are known to exhibit stochastic variations on time-scales of hours, days, months and years. Previous efforts to characterize the stochastic nature of this variability have been hampered by the lack of high-precision space-based measurements of AGN fluxes with regular cadence. Kepler provides light-curves with a S/N ratio of 10-5 for 87 AGN observed over a period of ~ 3 years with a cadence of once every 30 minutes allowing for a detailed examination of the variability process. We probe AGN variability using the Structure Functions of the light-curves of the Kepler AGN. Monte-Carlo simulations of the structure function are used to fit the observed light-curve to models for the Power Spectral Density. We test various models for the form of the PSD including the damped random walk and the powered exponential models. We show that on the shorter time-scales probed by Kepler data, the damped random walk model fails to adequately characterize AGN variability. We find that the PSD may be better modelled by combination of a steep power law of the form 1/f3 on shorter time-scales, and a more shallow power law of the form 1/f2 on the longer time-scales traditionally probed by ground-based variability studies.
- Publication:
-
American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #224
- Pub Date:
- June 2014
- Bibcode:
- 2014AAS...22422106K