TY - JOUR

T1 - On the time variability of gamma-ray sources

AU - F. Torres, Diego

AU - Pessah, Martin Elias

AU - E. Romero, Gustavo

PY - 2001/10/30

Y1 - 2001/10/30

N2 - We present a Monte Carlo analysis of the recently introduced variability indices $\tau$ (Tompkins 1999) and $I$ (Zhang et al. 2000 & Torres et al. 2001) for $\gamma$-ray sources. We explore different variability criteria and prove that these two indices, despite the very different approaches used to compute them, are statistically correlated (5 to 7$\sigma$). This conclusion is maintained also for the subset of AGNs and high latitude ($|b|>10$ deg) sources, whereas the correlation is lowered for the low latitude ones, where the influence of the diffuse galactic emission background is strong.

AB - We present a Monte Carlo analysis of the recently introduced variability indices $\tau$ (Tompkins 1999) and $I$ (Zhang et al. 2000 & Torres et al. 2001) for $\gamma$-ray sources. We explore different variability criteria and prove that these two indices, despite the very different approaches used to compute them, are statistically correlated (5 to 7$\sigma$). This conclusion is maintained also for the subset of AGNs and high latitude ($|b|>10$ deg) sources, whereas the correlation is lowered for the low latitude ones, where the influence of the diffuse galactic emission background is strong.

KW - astro-ph

KW - gr-qc

U2 - 10.1002/1521-3994(200110)322:4<223::AID-ASNA223>3.0.CO;2-K

DO - 10.1002/1521-3994(200110)322:4<223::AID-ASNA223>3.0.CO;2-K

M3 - Journal article

VL - 322

SP - 223

EP - 227

JO - Astronomische Nachrichten

JF - Astronomische Nachrichten

SN - 0004-6337

IS - 4

ER -