Intranight optical variability of radio-quiet BL Lacertae objects

¹ Key Laboratory of Particle Astrophysics, Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, PO Box 918-3, Beijing 100049, PR China
e-mail: liuyuan@ihep.ac.cn; zhangsn@ihep.ac.cn
² National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100012, PR China
e-mail: zhang.jin@hotmail.com

Received: 31 October 2014
Accepted: 18 January 2015

Abstract

Aims. Intranight variation (or microvariation) is a common phenomenon of radio-loud BL Lac objects. However, it is not clear whether the recently found radio-quiet BL Lac objects have the same properties. The occurrence rate of intranight variation is helpful in distinguishing the mechanism of the continuum of radio-quiet BL Lac objects.

Methods. We conducted a photometric monitoring of 8 radio-quiet BL Lac objects by the Xinglong 2.16 m and Lijiang 2.4 m telescopes. The differential light curves are calculated between each target and two comparison stars. To quantify the variation, the significance of variation is examined by a scaled F-test.

Results. No significant variation is found in the 11 sessions of light curves of 8 radio-quiet BL Lac objects (one galactic source is excluded). The lack of microvariation in radio-quiet BL Lac objects is consistent with the detection rate of microvariation in normal radio-quiet AGNs, but much lower than for radio-loud AGNs. This result indicates that the continua of the radio-quiet BL Lac objects are not dominated by jets that will induce frequent microvariations.