RoboPol: first season rotations of optical polarization plane in blazars

Abstract

We present first results on polarization swings in optical emission of blazars obtained by RoboPol, a monitoring programme of an unbiased sample of gamma-ray bright blazars specially designed for effective detection of such events. A possible connection of polarization swing events with periods of high activity in gamma-rays is investigated using the data set obtained during the first season of operation. It was found that the brightest gamma-ray flares tend to be located closer in time to rotation events, which may be an indication of two separate mechanisms responsible for the rotations. Blazars with detected rotations during non-rotating periods have significantly larger amplitude and faster variations of polarization angle than blazars without rotations. Our simulations show that the full set of observed rotations is not a likely outcome (probability ≤1.5 × 10⁻²) of a random walk of the polarization vector simulated by a multicell model. Furthermore, it is highly unlikely (∼5 × 10⁻⁵) that none of our rotations is physically connected with an increase in gamma-ray activity.