초록
We study the long-term radio variability of 43 radio bright AGNs by exploiting the data base of the University of Michigan Radio Astronomy Observatory (UMRAO) monitoring program. The UMRAO database provides high quality lightcurves spanning 25 - 32 years in time at three observing frequencies, 4.8, 8, and 14.5 GHz. We model the periodograms (temporal power spectra) of the observed lightcurves as simple power-law noise (red noise, spectral power $P(f){\propto}f^{-{\beta}}$ using Monte Carlo simulations, taking into account windowing effects (red-noise leak, aliasing). The power spectra of 39 (out of 43) sources are in good agreement with the models, yielding a range in power spectral index (${\beta}$) from ${\approx}1$ to ${\approx}3$. We find a strong anti-correlation between ${\beta}$ and the fractal dimension of the lightcurves, which provides an independent check of the quality of our modelling of power spectra. We fit a Gaussian function to each flare in a given lightcurve to obtain the flare duration. We discover a correlation between ${\beta}$ and the median duration of the flares. We use the derivative of a lightcurve to obtain a characteristic variability timescale which does not depend on the assumed functional form of the flares, incomplete fitting, and so on. We find that, once the effects of relativistic Doppler boosting on the observed timescales are corrected, the variability timescales of our sources are proportional to the black hole mass to the power of ${\alpha}=1.70{\pm}0.49$. We see an indication for AGNs in different regimes of accretion rate, flat spectrum radio quasars and BL Lac objects, having different scaling relations with ${\alpha}{\approx}1$ and ${\approx}2$, respectively. We find that modelling the periodograms of four of our sources requires the assumption of broken powerlaw spectra. From simulating lightcurves as superpositions of exponential flares we conclude that strong overlap of flares leads to featureless simple power-law periodograms of AGNs at radio wavelengths in most cases (The paper is about to be submitted to ApJ).