Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are powerful astrophysical events with relativistic jets. In this Letter the broadband spectral properties are compared between GRBs and the well-observed blazars. The distribution of GRBs are consistent with the well-known blazar sequence including the $νL_ν(5\rm GHz)-α_{\rm RX}$ and $νL_ν(5\rm GHz)-ν_{\rm peak}$ correlations, where $α_{\rm RX}$ is defined as the broadband spectral slope in radio-to-X-ray bands, and $ν_{\rm peak}$ is defined as the spectral peak frequency. Moreover, GRBs occupy the low radio luminosity end of these sequences. These two correlations suggest that GRBs could have a similar radiation process with blazars both in the prompt emission and afterglow phases, i.e., synchrotron radiation.
Over seventy blazars identified as sources of TeV gamma ray emission have been detected, including approximately sixty BL Lac objects and seven flat spectrum radio quasars. The distribution in space of these objects can be described by a luminosity function, which gives their comoving space density as a function of their luminosity. We investigate a source selection method to be used for determining the luminosity function of TeV gamma-ray blazars using observations from VERITAS, a ground-based gamma-ray observatory consisting of an array of four atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes located in sou…
Blazars exhibit stochastic flux variability across the electromagnetic spectrum, often exhibiting heavy-tailed flux distributions, commonly modeled as lognormal. However, Tavecchio et al. (2020) and Adams et al. (2022) found that the high-energy gamma-ray flux distributions of several of the brightest flaring Fermi-LAT flat spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs) are well modeled by an even heavier-tailed distribution, which we show is the inverse gamma distribution. We propose an autoregressive inverse gamma variability model in which an inverse gamma flux distribution arises as a consequence of a sho…
The peak frequencies of the two broad humps evident in the spectral energy density of blazars (SED) are time dependent and vary a lot between different blazars. However, their ratio in most blazars, appears to be almost universal and equal to $m_e c^2/4(1+z) ε_p$ to a good approximation, where $m_e$ is the electron mass, $ε_p$ is the peak energy of the cosmic microwave background radiation, and $z$ is the redshift of the blazar. We discuss a possible origin of such a universal ratio in blazars and gamma ray bursts (GRBs). We point out a possible connection between the knee in the energy spectr…
We collect a sample of 78 Fermi detected blazars with broad line region (BLR) data and the quasi-simultaneous multi-wave band data. By analyzing the sample, we find: (1) For whole blazar sample, there exist significant correlations between radio, $γ$-ray luminosity and BLR luminosity. The slope of the best-fit linear regression equation is close to the theoretical value 1. Our results provided another support of jet-disk symbiosis. (2) For FSRQ sample, we find a significant correlation between radio luminosity and optical luminosity, and weaker correlations between X-ray luminosity and radio, …
A Universal Physics Defining the Radiation Spectra of Blazars and Gamma-Ray Bursts
Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute（韩国天文与空间科学研究所）；University of Science and Technology（科学技术大学）；University of Hong Kong（香港大学）；Nevada Center for Astrophysics and Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nevada, Las Vegas（内华达大学拉斯维加斯分校天体物理中心及物理与天文学系）；NASA Goddard Space Flight Center（美国宇航局戈达德太空飞行中心）；Center for Space Science and Technology, University of Maryland, Baltimore County（马里兰大学巴尔的摩郡分校空间科学与技术中心）；Seoul National University（首尔大学）；Yonsei University（延世大学）
Bolometric luminosity is a basic physical parameter that is widely used in the study of blazars. Due to the lack of simultaneous full wavelength data, several estimators of the bolometric luminosity are being used in practice. In this paper, we study and evaluate the reliability and significance of six estimators, the $5GHz$ luminosity, the 1keV luminosity, the $γ$-ray luminosity, the $5GHz$ luminosity+the 1keV luminosity, the $5GHz$ luminosity+the $γ$-ray luminosity and the 1keV luminosity+the $γ$-ray luminosity, by analyzing the linear correlations between the integrated bolometric luminosit…
The aim of this white paper is to discuss the observing strategies for the LSST Wide-Fast-Deep that would improve the study of blazars (emission variability, census, environment) and Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs). For blazars, these include the adoption of: i) a reference filter to allow reconstruction of a well-sampled light curve not affected by colour changes effects; ii) two snapshots/visit with different exposure times to avoid saturation during flaring states; iii) a rolling cadence to get better-sampled light curves at least in some time intervals. We also address the potential importance of…
We study the relation between the mass accretion rate, the jet power, and the black hole mass of blazars. To this aim, we make use of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and the 11 months catalog of blazars detected at energies larger than 100 MeV by the Large Area Telescope (LAT) onboard the Fermi satellite. This allows to construct a relatively large sample of blazars with information about the luminosity (or upper limits) of their emission lines used as a proxy for the strength of the disc luminosity and on the luminosity of the high energy emission, used as a proxy for the jet power. We fi…
We study if the diffuse astrophysical neutrino flux can come from blazar jets -- a subclass of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) -- while it, at the same time, respects the blazar stacking limit based on source catalogs and is consistent with the observation from TXS 0506+056. We compute the neutrino flux from resolved and unresolved sources using an averaged, empirical relationship between electromagnetic spectrum and luminosity, known as the {\em blazar sequence}, for two populations of blazars (BL Lacs and FSRQs). Using a source model with realistic neutrino flux computations, we demonstrate th…
We revisit the blazar sequence exploiting the complete, flux limited sample of blazars with known redshift detected by the Fermi satellite after 4 years of operations (the 3LAC sample). We divide the sources into gamma-ray luminosity bins, collect all the archival data for all blazars, and construct their spectral energy distribution (SED). We describe the average SED of blazars in the same luminosity bin through a very simple, completely phenomenological function consisting of two broken power laws connecting with a power law of fixed slope describing the radio emission. We do that separately…
We study the frequently used assumption in multi-messenger astrophysics that the gamma-ray and neutrino fluxes are directly connected because they are assumed to be produced by the same photohadronic production chain. An interesting candidate source for this test is the flat-spectrum radio quasar PKS B1424-418, which recently called attention of a potential correlation between an IceCube PeV-neutrino event and its burst phase. We simulate both the multi-waveband photon and the neutrino emission from this source using a self-consistent radiation model. We demonstrate that a simple hadronic mode…
Blazars are an extreme subclass of active galactic nuclei. Their rapid variability, luminous brightness, superluminal motion, and high and variable polarization are probably due to a beaming effect. However, this beaming factor (or Doppler factor) is very difficult to measure. Currently, a good way to estimate it is to use the time scale of their radio flares. In this $Letter$, we use multiwavelength data and Doppler factors reported in the literatures for a sample of 86 flaring blazars detected by Fermi to compute their intrinsic multiwavelength data and intrinsic spectral energy distribution…
Gamma-ray observations have revealed strong variability in blazar luminosities in the gamma-ray band over time scales as short as minutes. We show, for the first time, that the correlation of the spectrum with intensity is consistent with the behavior of the luminosity variation of blazar SEDs along a blazar sequence for low synchrotron peak blazars. We show that the observational signatures of variability with flux are consistent with wakefield acceleration of electrons initiated by instabilities in the blazar accretion disk. This mechanism reproduces the observed time variations as short as …
Rotations of the electric vector position angle (EVPA) in blazars are often close to an integral multiple of 180$^\circ$. There are multiple examples of this in the literature, and our analysis here, of the optical polarization data from the RoboPol monitoring program, strengthens the evidence by showing that $nπ$ rotations occur more frequently than expected by chance. We explain this with a model consisting of two polarized emission components: a "jet" that is constant in time, and a "burst" that is variable. The EVPA of the combination is $\rm EVPA_{jet}$ at both the beginning and the end o…
Blazars constitute the vast majority of extragalactic $γ$-ray sources. They can also contribute a sizable fraction of the diffuse astrophysical neutrinos detected by IceCube. In the past few years, the real-time alert system of IceCube has led to multiwavelength follow-up of very high-energy neutrino events of plausible astrophysical origin. Spatial and temporal coincidences of these neutrino events with the high-activity state of $γ$-ray blazars can provide a unique opportunity to decipher cosmic-ray interactions in the relativistic jets. Assuming that blazars accelerate cosmic rays up to ult…
We derive the most up-to-date Swift-Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) blazar luminosity function in the 14-195 keV range, making use of a clean sample of 118 blazars detected in the BAT 105-month survey catalog, with newly obtained redshifts from the BAT AGN Spectroscopic Survey (BASS). We determine the best-fit X-ray luminosity function for the whole blazar population, as well as for Flat Spectrum Radio Quasars (FSRQs) alone. The main results are: (1) at any redshift, BAT detects the most luminous blazars, above any possible break in their luminosity distribution, which means we cannot differentiat…
Blazars emit a highly-variable non-thermal spectrum. It is usually assumed that the same non-thermal electrons are responsible for the IR-optical-UV emission (via synchrotron) and the gamma-ray emission (via inverse Compton). Hence, the light curves in the two bands should be correlated. Orphan gamma-ray flares (i.e., lacking a luminous low-frequency counterpart) challenge our theoretical understanding of blazars. By means of large-scale two-dimensional radiative particle-in-cell simulations, we show that orphan gamma-ray flares may be a self-consistent by-product of particle energization in t…
In this work, we collected a sample of 69 TeV blazars from TeVCat, obtained their multi-wavelength observations, and fitted their spectral energy distributions by using the second degree polynomial function. The structure parameters of the synchrotron bumps for 68 blazars and those of the inverse-Compton bumps for 56 blzars are obtained. Then, we adopted statistical analysis to the parameters (curvature, peak frequency, peak luminosity, bolometric luminosity, and X/$γ$-ray spectral indexes). From our analysis and discussions, we can get following conclusions: 1. There is a clear positive corre…
We fit the spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of members of a large sample of Fermi 2LAC blazars to synchrotron and inverse Compton (IC) models. Our main results are as follows. (i) As suggested by previous works, the correlation between peak frequency and curvature can be explained by statistical or stochastic particle acceleration mechanisms. For BL Lacs, we find a linear correlation between synchrotron peak frequency and its curvature. The slope of the correlation is consistent with the stochastic acceleration mechanisms and confirm previous studies. For FSRQs, we also find a linear corre…
We combined multi-wavelength data for blazars from the Roma-BZCAT catalog and analyzed hundreds of X-ray spectra. We present the fluxes and Spectral Energy Distributions (SEDs), in 12 frequency bands from radio to $γ$-rays, for a final sample of 2214 blazars. Using a model-independent statistical approach, we looked for systematic trends in the SEDs; the most significant trends involved the radio luminosities and X-ray spectral indices of the blazars. We used a Principal Component Analysis (PCA), to determine the basis vectors of the blazar SEDs and, in order to maximize the size of the sample…
...The distribution of radio core-dominance is consistent with average projection angles of 13.5, 14.8, 16.8, 20.4, and 28.2 for ISPs, LSPs, FSRQs, HSPs, and radio galaxies, respectively. Linear regression analyses of our data yield significant anti-correlation r greater than 0.60 between core-dominance parameter and extended luminosity in each individual subsample, the correlation is significant only when individual subsamples are considered. There is a systematic sequence of the distribution of the different subclasses on the Core-dominance parameter-extended luminosity plane. Nevertheless, …
We have not identified for sure what is the mechanism launching, accelerating and collimating relativistic jets. The two most likely possibilities are the gravitational energy of the accreting matter or the rotational energy of a spinning black hole. Even the evaluation of the jet power is not trivial, since the radiation from the jet is enhanced by relativistic beaming, and there are fundamental uncertainties concerning the matter content of the jet (electron--proton or electron--positron plasma). However, in recent years, there have been crucial advances mainly driven by the richness of data…
We construct a large sample of gamma-ray blazars with low-frequency radio data using the recent released TGSS AD1 catalog at 150 MHz. The radio/gamma connections of blazars are compared from 143 GHz to 150 MHz. The radio flux density at all radio frequencies shows strong correlation with gamma-ray flux for blazars, as well as for the two subclasses, FSRQs and BL Lacs. But the correlations get worse from high to low radio frequencies, which indicates that the low-frequency radio emission is the mixture of extended and core components for blazars. In addition, we find that the correlation betwee…
(Abridged) In this paper, multi-wavelength data are compiled for a sample of 1425 Fermi blazars to calculate their spectral energy distributions (SEDs). A parabolic function, $\log(νF_ν) = P_1(\logν- P_2)^2 + P_3,$ is used for SED fitting. Synchrotron peak frequency ($\log ν_p$), spectral curvature ($P_1$), peak flux ($ν_{\rm p}F_{\rm ν_p}$), and integrated flux ($νF_ν$) are successfully obtained for 1392 blazars (461 flat spectrum radio quasars-FSRQs, 620 BL Lacs-BLs and 311 blazars of uncertain type-BCUs, 999 sources have known redshifts). Monochromatic luminosity at radio 1.4 GHz, optical R…
The origin of high-energy emission in blazars jets (i.e., leptonic versus hadronic) has been a long-standing matter of debate. Here, we focus on one variant of hadronic models where proton synchrotron radiation accounts for the observed steady $γ$-ray blazar emission. Using analytical methods, we derive the minimum jet power ($P_{j,\min}$) for the largest blazar sample analyzed to date (145 sources), taking into account uncertainties of observables and jet's physical parameters. We compare $P_{j,\min}$ against three characteristic energy estimators for accreting systems, i.e., the Eddington lu…
We discuss the production of ultra-high-energy cosmic ray (UHECR) nuclei and neutrinos from blazars. We compute the nuclear cascade in the jet for both BL Lac objects and flat-spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs), and in the ambient radiation zones for FSRQs as well. By modeling representative spectral energy distributions along the blazar sequence, two distinct regimes are identified, which we call "nuclear survival" -- typically found in low-luminosity BL Lacs, and "nuclear cascade" -- typically found in high-luminosity FSRQs. We quantify how the neutrino and cosmic-ray (CR) emission efficiencies …
Blazars are potential candidates of cosmic-ray acceleration up to ultrahigh energies ($E\gtrsim10^{18}$ eV). For an efficient cosmic-ray injection from blazars, $pγ$ collisions with the extragalactic background light (EBL) and cosmic microwave background (CMB) can produce neutrino spectrum peaks near PeV and EeV energies, respectively. We analyze the contribution of these neutrinos to the diffuse background measured by the IceCube neutrino observatory. The fraction of neutrino luminosity originating from individual redshift ranges is calculated using the distribution of BL Lacs and FSRQs provi…
The jet composition and energy dissipation mechanism of Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and Blazars are fundamental questions which remain not fully understood. One plausible model is to interpret the $γ$-ray emission of GRBs and optical emission of blazars as synchrotron radiation of electrons accelerated from the collision-induced magnetic dissipation regions in Poynting-flux-dominated jets. The polarization observation is an important and independent information to test this model. Based on our recent 3D relativistic MHD simulations of collision-induced magnetic dissipation of magnetically dominate…
The two-component broad-band spectral energy distributions of blazars were suggested to form a sequence in which (1) the peak frequency of the low-energy (synchrotron) component nu_syn is anticorrelated with the synchrotron luminosity L_syn, and (2) the luminosity ratio of the high-energy (inverse Compton) to synchrotron components q = L_IC / L_syn (Compton dominance) increases with L_syn from the BL Lac objects (BL Lacs) to the flat spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs). The Compton dominance parameter is an important probe of plasma magnetisation in the blazar zones within relativistic jets. We inv…
IceCube has detected a cumulative flux of PeV neutrinos, which origin is unknown. Blazars, active galactic nuclei with relativistic jets pointing to us, are long and widely expected to be one of the strong candidates of high energy neutrino sources. The neutrino production depends strongly on the cosmic ray power of blazar jets, which is largely unknown. The recent null results in stacking searches of neutrinos for several blazar samples by IceCube put upper limits on the neutrino fluxes from these blazars. Here we compute the cosmic ray power and PeV neutrino flux of Fermi-LAT blazars, and fi…
