Study of the magnetic-field structure in the jet of active galactic nuclei using the time variation in polarization

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We studied the jet in active galactic nuclei using the time variation in optical polarization. The polarization variation was supposed to be just erratic in past studies with sparse observations. We performed polarimetric observations with a short cadence, and analyzed the data with new techniques we have developed. As a result, we found that 1) polarization variations tend to associate with short flares having a time-scale of days, 2) another polarization component having a long variation time-scale is occasionally present, as well as short flares. Those new findings were reported in 30 papers in refereed journals.