Orateur
Summary
Since the X-ray emission from blazars is variable on all time-scales,
long-term monitoring is required to characterize it and relate it to the
physics of the relativistic jets. The best approach involves comprehensive
multiwaveband observations. These include (1) millimeter-wave VLBI to
image the structure of the jet and magnetic field on the smallest possible
scales, (2) optical polarization so that features on the VLBI images with
unique polarization direction can be associated with the variable optical
emission, and (3) light curves for cross-frequency correlation analysis.
The author and his collaborators have been carrying out such an effort
over a number of years. The results thus far are very revealing, and
promise to be more so during the next several years when GLAST will be
producing very well sampled gamma-ray light curves for many blazars.
