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

我们利用光偏振的时间变化研究了活动星系核中的喷流。在过去的稀疏观测研究中，偏振变化被认为是不稳定的。我们以较短的节奏进行了偏振观测，并利用我们开发的新技术分析了数据。结果，我们发现1)偏振变化往往与时间尺度为天的短耀斑有关，2)偶尔存在另一种时间尺度变化较长的偏振分量，以及短耀斑。这些新发现发表在30篇期刊论文中。

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.