The power of blazar jets

By A. Celotti, G. Ghisellini. 2007

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We estimate the power of relativistic, extragalactic jets by modelling the spectral energy distribution of a large number of blazars. We adopt a simple one-zone, homogeneous, leptonic synchrotron and inverse Compton model, taking into account seed photons originating both locally in the jet and externally. The blazars under study have an often dominant high-energy component which, if interpreted as due to inverse Compton radiation, limits the value of the magnetic field within the emission region. As a consequence, the corresponding Poynting flux cannot be energetically dominant. Also the bulk kinetic power in relativistic leptons is often smaller than the dissipated luminosity. This suggests that the typical jet should comprise an energetically dominant proton component. If there is one proton per relativistic electrons, jets radiate around 2‐10 per cent of their power in high-power blazars and 3‐30 per cent in less powerful BL Lacs.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/021f75f1304df5fafdc7ba96c375268883c927c4

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Citations in the corpus

RELATIVISTIC RECONNECTION: AN EFFICIENT SOURCE OF NON-THERMAL PARTICLES (2014, background): “Flat electron spectra below GeV energies are required to fit the broad-band emission of hotspots in radio galaxies (Stawarz et al. 2007) and the X-ray spectrum of blazars (Celotti & Ghisellini 2008; Sikora et al. 2009).”
The transition between BL Lac objects and flat spectrum radio quasars (2010, background): “Although we do have limits to the possible amount of pairs (that cannot be energetically important, see Sikora & Madejski 2000, Celotti & Ghisellini 2008; Ghisellini & Tavecchio 2010) some uncertainty remains on the exact amount of pairs in jets.”
Canonical high power blazars (2009, methodology): “…Madejski (2000) discussed this problem concludingthat, though they can exist, their amount is limited to a few pairs per proton, and a similar conclusion was reached by Celotti & Ghisellini (2008) analysing a large number spectral energy distributions (SEDs) for deriving the jet powers of blazars.”
ACCELERATION OF PARTICLES AT THE TERMINATION SHOCK OF A RELATIVISTIC STRIPED WIND (2011, background): “In the case of luminous blazar sources, very flat electron spectra below GeV energies are inferred directly from X-ray observations (Celotti & Ghisellini 2008; Sikora et al. 2009).”
INSIGHTS INTO THE HIGH-ENERGY γ-RAY EMISSION OF MARKARIAN 501 FROM EXTENSIVE MULTIFREQUENCY OBSERVATIONS IN THE FERMI ERA (2011, background): “Moreover, assuming one electron-proton pair per electron-positron pair within the emission region (see Celotti & Ghisellini 2008), or equivalently N ′p ≃ N ′e/3 where the total comoving number density of the jet leptons is N ′e = ∫ n′e(γ) dγ ≃ 0.26 cm−3 , (17) we obtain the comoving energy density…”
PARTICLE ACCELERATION AND PLASMA DYNAMICS DURING MAGNETIC RECONNECTION IN THE MAGNETICALLY DOMINATED REGIME (2015, methodology): “To explain the observed high-energy emissions, often an efficient energy conversion mechanism is required (e.g., Zhang et al. 2007; Celotti & Ghisellini 2008; Zhang & Yan 2011; Zhang et al. 2013).”
RADIO-LOUD NARROW-LINE SEYFERT 1 AS A NEW CLASS OF GAMMA-RAY ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI (2009, result): “The comparison with the large sample of blazars reported in Celotti & Ghisellini (2008) and Ghisellini et al. (2009b) shows that the jet powers of PKS 1502+036 and PMN J0948+0022 are in the region of quasars, while 1H 0323+342 and PKS 2004−447 are in the range typical of BL Lac Objects.”
FERMI LARGE AREA TELESCOPE GAMMA-RAY DETECTION OF THE RADIO GALAXY M87 (2009, background): “These power estimates are similar to those derived for BL Lacs from similarly modeling their broad-band SEDs (e.g., Celotti & Ghisellini 2008).”
LEPTONIC AND HADRONIC MODELING OF FERMI-DETECTED BLAZARS (2013, background): “Steady-state leptonic models have met with great success in modeling the SEDs of all classes of blazars (e.g., Ghisellini et al. 1998; Celotti & Ghisellini 2008), including substantial samples of Fermi-detected blazars (e.g., Ghisellini et al. 2010).”
FERMI/LARGE AREA TELESCOPE DISCOVERY OF GAMMA-RAY EMISSION FROM A RELATIVISTIC JET IN THE NARROW-LINE QUASAR PMN J0948+0022 (2009, background): “As occurs in typical powerful blazars (see e.g. Celotti & Ghisellini 2008, also for the exact definitions of these powers), the radiation observed carries more power than what is available in magnetic field and electron energy.”
General physical properties of bright Fermi blazars (2009, background): “Furthermore, in the case of luminous FSRQs, the X–ray flux can be reliably associated to the EC mechanism (this occurs when the slope is very hard, because the SSC component tends to be rather softer, see the discussion of this point in Celotti & Ghisellini 2008).”
Relativistic Jets Shine through Shocks or Magnetic Reconnection (2015, background): “Recently, Ghisellini et al. (2014) modelled the spectral energy distribution (SED) of a large sample of blazars and, assuming one proton per radiating electron, they inferred a radiative effici ncy f ∼ 0.1 (see also Celotti & Ghisellini 2008).”
The Fermi blazars' divide (2009, background): “This fraction can be larger for BL Lacs (Celotti & Ghisellini 2008).”
Blazar Flares as an Origin of High-energy Cosmic Neutrinos? (2018, result): “The observed SED suggests that the Compton dominance parameter is around unity, suggesting a magnetic field of B′ ∼ 0.1 − 1 G (Keivani et al. 2018), which is consistent with population-based estimates for BL Lacs (Celotti & Ghisellini 2008; Murase et al. 2014).”
The Astrophysics of Ultrahigh-Energy Cosmic Rays (2011, background): “As discussed above, Lemoine & Waxman (2009) point out that only FRII/FSRQ radio-galaxies with magnetic luminosity LB & 1045 erg s−1 (following the modeling of Celotti & Ghisellini 2008) meet the energetic requirements to accelerate particles to the highest energies.”
PARTICLE ACCELERATION IN RELATIVISTIC MAGNETIZED COLLISIONLESS ELECTRON–ION SHOCKS (2010, background): “In fact, this component might reasonably explain the emission from AGN jets, which often requires an electron distribution extending only for one decade in energy (Celotti & Ghisellini 2008).”
CONSTRAINING EMISSION MODELS OF LUMINOUS BLAZAR SOURCES (2009, background): “…different authors came to the conclusion that the cold protons indeed dominate the jet bulk kinetic power, at least at >rBLR scales, and that the number ratio of electron–proton to electron–positron pairs in quasar jets is of the order of 0.1–1 (Sikora & Madejski 2000; Celotti & Ghisellini 2008).”
The blazar sequence: a new perspective (2008, methodology): “The energy distribution of the emitting particles, N(γ ) (cm−3), is assumed to be the same as the one described in Ghisellini et al. (2002) and Celotti & Ghisellini (2008).”