Speaker
Description
Optical Synchrotron emission from blazars is significantly polarized and the polarization probes the magnetic field structure in the jet. Rotations of the polarization angle in blazars reveal important information about the evolution of disturbances responsible for blazar flares. Early results indicated that such rotations might be coincident with unusual gamma-ray activity of such sources. The RoboPol program for the polarimetric monitoring of statistically complete samples of blazars was developed in 2013 to systematically study this class of events and their possible connection with gamma-ray flares. RoboPol uses an innovative polarimeter installed at the 1.3m telescope of the University of Crete, and it is a collaboration between the University of Crete, Caltech, the Max-Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics in India, and the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Poland. I will review the results of the 4-year aggressive, high-cadence gamma-ray—loud blazar monitoring with RoboPol, including the classification of the optopolarimetric properties of gama-ray—loud blazars, the statistical properties of polarization rotations, and their, now confirmed, relation to gamma-ray activity in blazar jets.
