Nonlinear Characteristics of Radio Variability in Quasar 3C 446

Abstract

Quasars are characterized by violent and large amplitude variability in all the observation wavelengths, and the analysis of optical variability is useful for developing theoretical models. Long-term optical variability data of quasar 3C 446 were collected from the University of Michigan Radio Astronomy Observatory database in the 4.8, 8.0, and 14.5 GHz radio bands from 1976 to 2012. Due to the complexity of the variability data, it's hard to study by the linear time series analysis methods. For learning more about non-linear characteristics of the temporal evolution of quasar variability, the Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition and nonlinear analysis are used to analyse chaotic dynamics, fractal properties, and periodicity. This paper focuses on whether there is a significant difference between the periodic and non-linear properties of the quasar variability before and after the removal of the periodic or chaotic components. It turns out that the variability of quasar 3C 446 in the radio bands consists of periodic, trend, and chaotic components, and the periodic and trend components are dominant. The periods of the variability after removing the chaotic and trend components are exactly the same as the periods of the original variability data, but the chaotic and fractal characteristics of the two are significantly different. The saturated correlation dimension indicates that the reconstruction of the dynamical system requires more independent parameters than the original optical variables after the removal of the periodic and trend components. The Kolmogorov entropy indicates that the loss of information is greater for the former than the latter, and the system is more chaotic and more complex. The Hurst value indicates that the self-similarity and long-range correlation are slightly stronger for the latter than the former.