FROM THE BLAZAR SEQUENCE TO THE BLAZAR ENVELOPE: REVISITING THE RELATIVISTIC JET DICHOTOMY IN RADIO-LOUD ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI

By E. Meyer, G. Fossati, M. Georganopoulos, M. Lister. 2011

143 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We revisit the concept of a blazar sequence that relates the synchrotron peak frequency (νpeak) in blazars with synchrotron peak luminosity (Lpeak, in νLν) using a large sample of radio-loud active galactic nuclei. We present observational evidence that the blazar sequence is formed from two populations in the synchrotron νpeak–Lpeak plane, each forming an upper edge to an envelope of progressively misaligned blazars, and connecting to an adjacent group of radio galaxies having jets viewed at much larger angles to the line of sight. When binned by jet kinetic power (Lkin; as measured through a scaling relationship with extended radio power), we find that radio core dominance decreases with decreasing synchrotron Lpeak, revealing that sources in the envelope are generally more misaligned. We find population-based evidence of velocity gradients in jets at low kinetic powers (∼1042–1044.5 erg s−1), corresponding to Fanaroff–Riley (FR) I radio galaxies and most BL Lac objects. These low jet power “weak-jet” sources, thought to exhibit radiatively inefficient accretion, are distinguished from the population of non-decelerating, low synchrotron-peaking (LSP) blazars and FR II radio galaxies (“strong” jets) which are thought to exhibit radiatively efficient accretion. The two-population interpretation explains the apparent contradiction of the existence of highly core-dominated, low-power blazars at both low and high synchrotron peak frequencies, and further implies that most intermediate synchrotron peak sources are not intermediate in intrinsic jet power between LSP and high synchrotron-peaking (HSP) sources, but are more misaligned versions of HSP sources with similar jet powers.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/bd211acf2d82967f6039d6ac4a787fc4b1327b53

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. A. Marscher
2. Bing Zhang
3. M. Tornikoski
4. A. Lähteenmäki
5. D. Burrows
6. N. Gehrels
7. S. Jorstad
8. M. Massardi

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. A. Marscher
2. A. Lähteenmäki
3. M. Tornikoski
4. S. Jorstad
5. P. Giommi
6. J. Rachen
7. J. Gómez
8. J. Zensus

Citations in the corpus

• Simultaneous Planck, Swift, and Fermi observations of X-ray and γ-ray selected blazars (2011, background): “23, if lower limits are ignored, is similar to that found by Meyer et al. (2011) who estimated both the νSpeak and peak luminosities of a large sample of blazars using non-simultaneous multi-frequency data.”
• Kinematics of Parsec-scale Jets of Gamma-Ray Blazars at 43 GHz within the VLBA-BU-BLAZAR Program (2017, background): “According to locations of these peaks, FSRQs and BLLacs form a “blazar sequence,” with FSRQs and more luminous BLLacs (LBLs) peaking at the lowest frequencies and less luminous BLLacs at higher frequencies within the above intervals (HBLs; Ghisellini et al. 1998; Meyer et al. 2011).”