Search for correlated radio and optical events in long-term studies of extragalactic sources

For the first time, long-term records of radio and optical fluxes of a large sample of variable extragalactic sources have been assembled and compared, with linear cross-correlation analysis being used to reinforce the visual comparisons. Only in the case of the BL Lac object OJ 287 is the correlation between radio and optical records strong. In the majority of cases there is no evidence of significant correlation, although nine sources show limited or weak evidence of correlation. The results do not support naive extrapolation of the expanding source model. The general absence of strong correlation between the radio and optical regions has important implications for the energetics of events occurring in such sources.