Study of the Time-Series of Microvariability in Kepler Blazar W2R 1926+42

One of the remarkable features of blazars is violent variability over a wide wavelength range. The variation mechanism causing the observed complex behavior is still under debate. The variability timescales range from less than a day to decades. Variation on timescales less than a day is known as “microvariability.” Such short-term variations can provide insights regarding the origin of the variability after they are distinguished from longer-term variational components. We select about 195 microvariability events from the continuous light curve of blazar W2R 1926+42 with 1-min time resolution obtained by the Kepler spacecraft, and estimate the timescale and amplitude of each event. The rise and decay timescales of the events reveal random variations over short timescales less than a day, but they indicate systematic variations on timescales longer than several days. This result implies that the events are not independent, but rather mutually correlated.