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We present the results of an extensive γ-ray data analysis of the emission from the blazar S5 0716+714 with the primary motivation to study its temporal and spectral variability behavior. In this work, we extract a 10 days binned γ-ray light curve from 2008 August 4 to 2016 April 27 in the energy range of 0.1–300 GeV and identify six outburst periods with peak flux of >4 × 10−7 ph cm−2 s−1 from this highly variable source. The brightest flares are identified by zooming in these outburst periods to 1 day binning and using the Bayesian Blocks algorithm. The fastest variability timescale is found to be 1.5 ± 0.3 hr at MJD 57128.01 ± 0.01 with a peak flux above 100 MeV of (26.8 ± 6.9) × 10−7 ph cm−2 s−1. No hint of periodic modulations has been detected for the light curve of S5 0716+714. During the outburst phases, the γ-ray spectrum shows an obvious spectral break with a break energy between 0.93 and 6.90 GeV energies, which may be caused by an intrinsic break in the energy distribution of radiating particles. The five highest-energy photons, with E > 100 GeV, imply that the high-energy emission from this source may originate from a moving emission region in a helical path upstream in the jet. The spectral behavior and temporal characteristics of the individual flares indicate that the location of the emission region lies in the sub-parsec scale (r γ

We present long-term optical multi-band photometric monitoring of the blazar OJ 287 from 6 March 2010 to 3 April 2016, with high temporal resolution in the V R I -bands. The flux variations and colour-magnitude variations on long and short timescales were investigated to understand the emission mechanisms. In our observation, the major outbursts occurred in January 2016, as predicted by the binary pair of black holes model for OJ 287, with F v a r of 1.3∼2.1%, and variability amplitude (Amp) of 5.8∼9.0%. The intra-night variability (IDV) durations were from 18.5 to 51.3 min, and the minimal variability timescale was about 4.7 min. The colour-magnitude variation showed a weak positive correlation on the long timescale with Pearson’s r = 0 . 450 , while a negative correlation was found on intra-night timescales. We briefly discuss the possible physical mechanisms that are most likely to be responsible for the observed flux and colour-magnitude correlation variability.

The origin of the multiband activities (outbursts/flares) of blazars is still a heavily debated topic. Shock and magnetic reconnection have long been considered as possible triggers of the multiband activities. In this paper, we present an exploration of the origin of multiband activities for a high-redshift (z = 1.8385) flat-spectrum radio quasar PKS. 1502+106. Utilizing multiband data from radio to gamma-ray and optical polarization observations, we investigate two dramatic activities in detail: a gamma-ray-dominated outburst in 2015 and an optical-dominated outburst in 2017. Our main results are as follows. (I) A fast gamma-ray flare with a flux-doubling timescale as short as 1 hr in 2015 is discovered. Based on the variability timescale, the physical parameters of the flaring region (e.g., minimum Doppler factor, emission region size, etc.) are constrained. At the peak of the flare, the gamma-ray spectrum hardens to Gamma(gamma) = 1.82 +/- 0.04 and exhibits an obvious curvature/break characteristic that is caused by the typical "cooling break." Modeling of multiband spectral energy distributions reveal a very hard electronic energy spectrum with the electronic spectral index of 1.07 +/- 0.53. This result suggests that this fast gamma-ray flare may be triggered by magnetic reconnection. (II) During the outburst in 2017, the degree of optical polarization and optical fluxes showed a very tight correlation. By analyzing the Stokes parameters of polarization observations, our results show that this outburst could be triggered by a transverse shock with a compression ratio of eta > 2.2, and the magnetic field intensity of the shock emission region is about 0.032. G.