2014MNRAS.439.3790M

This paper aims to investigate/map the effects that perturbations applied to an accretion disc might produce on the registered light curves (LCs). The case of accretion discs around supermassive active black holes (AGNs) is studied with the goal to explain some of the statistical properties of the observed intraday variability (IDV). The region producing optical IDV is perturbed by allowing it to develop a mass density of a fractional Brownian Motion-like type. The LCs and spectral slopes are calculated and compared to observational data for different Hurst parameters. The spectral slopes of the simulated LCs vary in the range (0.4, 2.5). The agreement with observational data shows that a magnetized disc subjected to stochastic perturbations can produce some of the features observed in the LCs.