By comparing the properties of non-recycled radio-loud $γ-$ray pulsars and radio-quiet $γ-$ray pulsars, we have searched for the differences between these two populations. We found that the $γ-$ray spectral curvature of radio-quiet pulsars can be larger than that of radio-loud pulsars. Based on the full sample of non-recycled $γ-$ray pulsars, their distributions of the magnetic field strength at the light cylinder are also found to be different. We notice that this might be resulted from the observational bias. In re-examining the previously reported difference of $γ-$ray-to-X-ray flux ratios, we found the significance can be hampered by their statistical uncertainties. In the context of outer gap model, we discuss the expected properties of these two populations and compare with the possible differences identified in our analysis.
Recent work on red and blue quasi-stellar objects (QSOs) has identified peculiar number distributions as a function of radio loudness that we explore and attempt to explain from the perspective of a picture in which a subset of the population of active galaxies evolves from the radio loud to the radio quiet state. Because the time evolution is slowed down by an order of magnitude or more for the radio quiet phase, the numbers of red and blue QSOs approach each other at the extreme end of the radio quiet range of radio loudness with larger numbers. The rapid time evolution of most radio loud ph…
Evidence has accumulated suggesting the clustering of radio loud quasars is greater than for radio quiet quasars. We interpret these results in a context in which the fraction of radio loud quasar formation is less than or equal to that for radio quiet quasars for all environments and redshift. Because we assume that post-merger cold gas onto large black holes produces either a radio loud or a radio quiet quasar, we show that for largest black hole masses that live in largest dark matter halos, fRLQ approaches 0.5 from below but does not exceed it, such that in rich clusters the formation of a…
We explore the possibility that radio loud gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) result from the collapse of massive stars in interacting binary systems, while radio quiet GRBs are produced by the collapse of single massive stars. A binary collapsar system can have the necessary angular momentum and energy budget to explain the longer prompt gamma-ray durations and higher isotropic energies seen in the the radio loud sub-sample of long GRBs. Additionally binary systems can lead to rich and extended circumstellar environments that allow for the presence of the long-lived radio afterglows seen in the radio lo…
To constrain models of the jet-disc connection, we explore Eddington ratios reported in Foschini (2011) and interpret them in relation to the values in Sikora et al. across the active galactic nuclei population from radio loud quasars, their flat spectrum radio quasar subclass, the recently discovered gamma-ray loud narrow-line type 1 Seyfert galaxies, Fanaroff-Riley type I (FRI) radio galaxies and radio quiet quasars of the Palomar Green survey. While appeal to disc truncation in radiatively inefficient flow appears to explain the observed inverse relation between radio loudness and Eddington…
The radiation-loud and radiation-quiet anti-glitches in magnetar 1E 2259+586 are discussed together. It is shown that the 2019 radiation-quiet anti-glitch in 1E 2259+586 is not constraining, because its amplitude is 2.5 smaller than the previous radiation-loud anti-glitch. We note that magnetars with high X-ray luminosity and low rotational energy loss rate are more likely to show anti-glitches. Anti-glitchers and radio-emitters of magnetars occupy opposite corner on the luminosity vs. rotational energy loss rate diagram. By introducing the X-ray luminosity parameter and the activity parameter…
We extend our study of energetic radio loud and quiet gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), suggesting these GRBs potentially come from two separate progenitor systems. We expand the sample from our previous paper (Lloyd-Ronning & Fryer, 2017) and find our results are strengthened - radio quiet GRBs have significantly shorter intrinsic prompt duration, and are also less energetic on average. However, the tenuous correlation between isotropic energy and intrinsic duration in the radio dark sample remains tenuous and is slightly weakened by adding more bursts. Interestingly, we find an anti-correlation betwe…
Observations by Fermi LAT enabled us to explore the population of non-recycled gamma-ray pulsars with the set of 89 objects. It was recently noted that there are apparent differences in properties of radio-quiet and radio-loud subsets. In particular, average observed radio-loud pulsar is younger than radio-quiet one and is located at smaller galactic latitude. Even so, the analysis based on the full list of pulsars may suffer from selection effects. Namely, most of radio-loud pulsars are first discovered in the radio-band, while radio-quiet ones are found using the gamma-ray data. In this work…
Observations of radio loud active galaxies in the XMM-Newton archive by Mehdipour & Costantini show a strong anti-correlation between the column density of the ionized wind and the radio loudness parameter, providing evidence that jets may thrive in thin disks. This is in contrast with decades of analytic and numerical work suggesting jet formation is contingent on the presence of an inner, geometrically thick disk structure, which serves to both collimate and accelerate the jet. Thick disks emerge in radiatively inefficient disks which are associated with sub-Eddington as well as super-Edding…
The Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) has observed more than a hundred of gamma-ray pulsars, about one third of which are radio-quiet, i.e. not detected at radio frequencies. The most of radio-loud pulsars are detected by Fermi LAT by using the radio timing models, while the radio-quiet ones are discovered in a blind search. The difference in the techniques introduces an observational selection bias and, consequently, the direct comparison of populations is complicated. In order to produce an unbiased sample, we perform a blind search of gamma-ray pulsations using Fermi-LAT data alone. No radio…
We present the study on the X-ray emission for a sample of radio-detected quasars constructed from the cross-matches between SDSS, FIRST catalogs and XMM-Newton archives. A sample of radio-quiet SDSS quasars without FIRST radio detection is also assembled for comparison. We construct the optical and X-ray composite spectra normalized at rest frame $4215\,\rm Å$ (or $2200\,\rm Å$) for both radio-loud quasars (RLQs) and radio-quiet quasars (RQQs) at $z\le3.2$, with matched X-ray completeness of 19\%, redshift and optical luminosity. While the optical composite spectrum of RLQs is similar to that…
We present new Chandra and XMM-Newton observations of a sample of eight radio-quiet Gamma-ray pulsars detected by the Fermi Large Area Telescope. For all eight pulsars we identify the X-ray counterpart, based on the X-ray source localization and the best position obtained from Gamma-ray pulsar timing. For PSR J2030+4415 we found evidence for an about 10 arcsec-long pulsar wind nebula. Our new results consolidate the work from Marelli et al. 2011 and confirm that, on average, the Gamma-ray--to--X-ray flux ratios (Fgamma/Fx) of radio-quiet pulsars are higher than for the radio-loud ones. Further…
We have compiled from the available literature a large set of radio measurements of black hole binaries in the hard X-ray state for which measurements of the gigahertz frequency radio spectral index are possible. We separate the sample into `radio loud' and `radio quiet' subsets based upon their distribution in the radio -- X-ray plane, and investigate the distribution of radio spectral indices within each subset. The distribution of spectral indices of the `radio loud' subset is well described by a Gaussian distribution with mean spectral index $α= +0.2$ and standard deviation $0.2$ (here spe…
We compare covering factors of circumnuclear dusty obscurers in radio-loud and radio-quiet quasars. The radio-loud quasars are represented by a sample of FR II quasars obtained by cross-matching a catalog of the FR II radio sources selected by van Velzen et al. with the SDSS DR7 catalog of quasars. Covering factors of FR II quasars are compared with covering factors of the radio-quiet quasars matched with them in redshift, black hole mass, and Eddington-ratio. We found that covering factors, proxied by the infrared-to-bolometric luminosity ratio, are on average slightly smaller in FR II quasar…
We present the results of a weekly monitoring of the new black hole candidate X-ray binary MAXI J1631-472 carried out with the MeerKAT radio interferometer, the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, and the Monitor of All-sky X-ray Image (MAXI) instrument, during its 2018-2019 outburst. The source exhibits a number of X-ray states, in particular both high- and low-luminosity hard states bracketed by extended soft states. Radio flaring is observed shortly after a transition from hard/intermediate states to the soft state. This is broadly in agreement with existing empirical models, but its extended d…
We examine the fundamental plane of black hole activity for correlations with redshift and radio loudness in both radio-loud and radio-quiet quasar populations. Sources are compiled from archival data of both radio-loud and radio-quiet quasars over redshifts $0.1 < z < 5.0$ to produce a sample of 353 sources with known X-ray, radio, and black hole mass measurements. A fundamental plane of accretion activity is fit to a sample of radio-loud and radio-quiet quasars, and we find a dichotomy between radio-loud and radio-quiet sources. The set of best-fit equations that best describe the two sample…
The main objective of this work is to establish and interpret the dominant spectral components and their differences in radio-loud (RL) and radio-quiet (RQ) AGN with very massive black holes, and accreting at moderate rates. Such a sample is selected from the \textit{Swift}/BAT catalogue of AGN having determined optical spectra types and hosting black holes with masses $\rm > 10^{8.5}\,M_{\odot}$. We confirm our previous results, that radio loudness distribution of \textit{Swift}/BAT AGN is bimodal and that radio galaxies are about two times X-ray louder than their radio-quiet counterparts. We…
The potential existence of two separate classes of Long-duration Gamma-Ray Bursts (LGRBs) with and without radio afterglow emission, corresponding to radio-bright/loud and radio-dark/quiet populations, has been recently argued and favored in the GRB literature. The radio-quiet LGRBs have been found to have, on average, lower total isotropic gamma-ray emissions (Eiso) and shorter intrinsic prompt gamma-ray duration (e.g., T90z). In addition, a redshift-T90z anti-correlation has been discovered among the radio-loud LGRBs, which is reportedly missing in the radio-quiet class. Here we discuss the …
Prompted by the Fermi LAT discovery of a radio-quiet gamma-ray pulsar inside the CTA 1 supernova remnant, we obtained a 130 ks XMM-Newton observation to assess the timing behavior of this pulsar. Exploiting both the unprecedented photon harvest and the contemporary Fermi LAT timing measurements, a 4.7 sigma single peak pulsation is detected, making PSR J0007+7303 the second example, after Geminga, of a radio-quiet gamma-ray pulsar also seen to pulsate in X-rays. Phase-resolved spectroscopy shows that the off-pulse portion of the light curve is dominated by a power-law, non-thermal spectrum, wh…
Accreting stellar-mass black holes appear to populate two branches in a radio:X-ray luminosity plane. We have investigated the X-ray variability properties of a large number of black hole low-mass X-ray binaries, with the aim of unveiling the physical reasons underlying the radio-loud/radio-quiet nature of these sources, in the context of the known accretion-ejection connection. A reconsideration of the available radio and X-ray data from a sample of black hole X-ray binaries confirms that being radio-quiet is the more normal mode of behaviour for black hole binaries. In the light of this we c…
We performed a study of high redshift ($z>2$) quasars, looking for the main differences between Radio Loud Quasars (RLQ) and Radio Quiet Quasars (RQQ) in the X-ray band. Our sample of 472 RQQ and 81 RLQ was selected by cross-matching the SDSS DR7 quasars catalog with the Chandra Source Catalog. We computed the X-ray luminosity for the two samples and confirmed the X-ray luminosity excess of RLQ over RQQ. We fit the X-ray spectra assuming the absorbed power law model and obtained the photon index ($Γ$) values for all the sources in the sample. We excluded quasars with a low number of counts ($<…
Radio loud active galactic nuclei (AGN) are on average 1000 times brighter in the radio band compared to radio quiet AGN. We investigate whether this radio loud/quiet dichotomy can be due to differences in the spin of the central black holes that power the radio-emitting jets. Using general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations, we construct steady state axisymmetric numerical models for a wide range of black hole spins (dimensionless spin parameter 0.1 <= a <= 0.9999 and a variety of jet geometries. We assume that the total magnetic flux through the black hole horizon at radius r_H(a) …
The fundamental plane for black hole activity constitutes a tight correlation between jet power, X-ray luminosity, and black hole mass. Under the assumption that a Blandford-Znajek-type mechanism, which relies on black hole spin, contributes non-negligibly to jet production, the sufficiently small scatter in the fundamental plane shows that black hole spin differences of $\mid$$Δ$a$\mid \sim$1 are not typical among the active galactic nuclei population. If $-$ as it seems $-$ radio loud and radio quiet objects are both faithful to the fundamental plane, models of black hole accretion in which …
We study the differences in X-ray properties of luminous radio galaxies and their radio-quiet counterparts. In order to avoid biases associated with the dependence of X-ray properties on the black hole mass and Eddington ratio, the radio-loud and radio-quiet objects are selected to cover similar ranges of these parameters. Our studies are based on the X-ray data from the Swift/BAT catalogue. We confirm previous results that radio galaxies are on average X-ray-louder than radio-quiet AGNs, but find that their spectral slopes are very similar. This suggests that in radio-loud and radio-quiet AGN…
We systematically analyze three GRB samples named as radio-loud, radio-quiet and radio-none afterglows, respectively. It is shown that dichotomy of the radio-loud afterglows is not necessary. Interestingly, we find that the intrinsic durations ($T_{int}$), isotropic energies of prompt gamma-rays ($E_{γ, iso}$) and redshifts ($z$) of their host galaxies are log-normally distributed for both the radio-loud and radio-quiet samples except those GRBs without any radio detections. Based on the distinct distributions of $T_{int}$, $E_{γ, iso}$, the circum-burst medium density ($n$) and the isotropic …
The Fermi Large Area Telescope has detected over 260 gamma-ray pulsars. About one quarter of these are labeled as radio-quiet. In the population of nonrecycled gamma-ray pulsars, the fraction of radio-quiet pulsars is higher, about one half. Most radio observations of gamma-ray pulsars have been performed at frequencies between 300 MHz and 2 GHz. However, pulsar radio fluxes increase rapidly with decreasing frequency, and their radio beams often broaden at low frequencies. As a consequence, some of these pulsars might be detectable at low radio frequencies even when no radio flux is detected a…
We present radio intensity and polarisation profiles of 28 $γ$-ray-detected pulsars with the aim of putting constraints on their viewing geometries using data from the Parkes telescope. Constraints are formed both from the goodness-of-fit of the position angles to the Rotating Vector Model and from the beam opening angle considering aberration and retardation effects. Uncertainties on the relevant parameters are systematically taken into account in order to produce a more robust constraint, using a new approach. Surprisingly, we find that the distribution of the magnetic inclination angle ($α$…
There is a growing new class of young spin-down powered pulsars called GeV-quiet soft gamma-ray pulsar; (1) spectral turnover appears around~10MeV, (2) the X-ray spectra of below 20 keV can be described by power law with photon index around 1.2 and (3) the light curve in X-ray/soft gamma-ray bands shows single broad pulse. Their emission properties are distinct from the normal gamma-ray pulsars, for which the spectral peak in $νF_ν$ appears in GeV energy bands and the X-ray/gamma-ray light curves show sharp and double (or more) peaks. In this paper, we discuss that X-ray/soft gamma-ray emissio…
Observing simultaneously pulsed radio and gamma-ray emission from these stars helps to constrain the geometry and radiation mechanisms within their magnetosphere and to localize the multiple photon production sites. In this paper, we fit the time-aligned gamma-ray light-curves of young radio-loud gamma-ray pulsars. We assume a dipole force-free magnetosphere where radio photons emanate from high altitude above the polar caps and gamma-rays originate from outside the light-cylinder, within the striped wind current sheet. We compute a full atlas of radio and gamma-ray pulse profiles depending on…
We present average R-band optopolarimetric data, as well as variability parameters, from the first and second RoboPol observing season. We investigate whether gamma- ray--loud and gamma-ray--quiet blazars exhibit systematic differences in their optical polarization properties. We find that gamma-ray--loud blazars have a systematically higher polarization fraction (0.092) than gamma-ray--quiet blazars (0.031), with the hypothesis of the two samples being drawn from the same distribution of polarization fractions being rejected at the 3σ level. We have not found any evidence that this discrepanc…
We demonstrate for the first time using a robust Bayesian approach to analyse the populations of radio-quiet (RQ) and radio-loud (RL) gamma-ray pulsars. We quantify their differences and obtain their distributions of the radio-cone opening half-angle $δ$ and the magnetic inclination angle $α$ by Bayesian inference. In contrast to the conventional frequentist point estimations that might be non-representative when the distribution is highly skewed or multi-modal, which is often the case when data points are scarce, Bayesian statistics displays the complete posterior distribution that the uncert…
We present the results of a multi-frequency, time-averaged analysis of blazars included in the Candidate Gamma-ray Blazar Survey catalog. Our sample consists of 324 $γ$-ray detected ($γ$-ray loud) and 191 non $γ$-ray detected ($γ$-ray quiet) blazars, and we consider all the data up to 2016 April 1. We find that both the $γ$-ray loud and the $γ$-ray quiet blazar populations occupy similar regions in the WISE color-color diagram, and in the radio and X-ray bands $γ$-ray loud sources are brighter. A simple one-zone synchrotron inverse-Compton emission model is applied to derive the physical prope…
We present new timing and spectral analyses of PSR J1412+7922 (Calvera) and PSR J1849-0001, which are only seen as pulsars in X-rays, based on observations conducted with the Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER). We obtain updated and substantially improved pulse ephemerides compared to previous X-ray studies, as well as spectra that can be well-fit by simple blackbodies and/or a power law. Our refined timing measurements enable deeper searches for pulsations at other wavelengths and sensitive targeted searches by LIGO/Virgo for continuous gravitational waves from these neutron s…
We report the discovery and timing measurements of PSR J1208-6238, a young and highly magnetized gamma-ray pulsar, with a spin period of 440 ms. The pulsar was discovered in gamma-ray photon data from the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) during a blind-search survey of unidentified LAT sources, running on the distributed volunteer computing system Einstein@Home. No radio pulsations were detected in dedicated follow-up searches with the Parkes radio telescope, with a flux density upper limit at 1369 MHz of 30 $μ$Jy. By timing this pulsar's gamma-ray pulsations, we measure its braking index over…
Using archival as well as freshly acquired data, we assess the X-ray behaviour of the Fermi/LAT gamma-ray pulsars listed in the First Fermi source catalog. After revisiting the relationships between the pulsars' rotational energy losses and their X and gamma-ray luminosities, we focus on the distance-indipendent gamma to X-ray flux ratios. When plotting our Fgamma/Fx values as a function of the pulsars' rotational energy losses, one immediately sees that pulsars with similar energetics have Fgamma/Fx spanning 3 decades. Such spread, most probably stemming from vastly different geometrical conf…
We investigate the relative occurrence of radio--loud and radio-quiet quasars in the first billion years of the Universe, powered by black holes heavier than one billion solar masses. We consider the sample of high-redshfit blazars detected in the hard X-ray band in the 3-years all sky survey performed by the Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) onboard the Swift satellite. All the black holes powering these blazars exceed a billion solar mass, with accretion luminosities close to the Eddington limit. For each blazar pointing at us, there must be hundreds of similar sources (having black holes of simil…
Millisecond pulsars (MSPs) are old neutron stars that spin hundreds of times per second and appear to pulsate as their emission beams cross our line of sight. To date, radio pulsations have been detected from all rotation-powered MSPs. In an attempt to discover radio-quiet gamma-ray MSPs, we used the aggregated power from the computers of tens of thousands of volunteers participating in the Einstein@Home distributed computing project to search for pulsations from unidentified gamma-ray sources in Fermi Large Area Telescope data. This survey discovered two isolated MSPs, one of which is the onl…
BL Lac objects are known to have compact jets inclined to our line of sight at a small angle, showing prominent radio emission. Two radio-weak BL Lac candidates with no counterparts in current radio surveys were recently reported by Massaro et al. (2017). Both sources were selected as candidate low-energy counterparts of unassociated Fermi γ-ray sources. We carried out very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) observations with the European VLBI Network (EVN) at 5 GHz to explore their radio properties at milli-arcsecond (mas) scale. One target, J1410+7405, is clearly detected with the EVN. Its …
We present the analysis of 2.1 years of Fermi/LAT data on 491 Seyfert galaxies detected by the Swift/BAT survey. Only the two nearest objects, NGC 1068 and NGC 4945, which were identified in the Fermi First-year Catalog, are detected. Using the Swift/BAT and radio 20 cm fluxes, we define a new radio-loudness parameter $R_{X, BAT}$ where radio loud objects have $\log R_{X, BAT} > - 4.7$. Based on this parameter, only radio loud sources are detected by Fermi/LAT. An upper limit to the flux of the undetected sources is derived to be $\sim 2 \times 10^{-11}$ photons cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$, approximate…
As part of a survey for radio pulsars with the Parkes 64-m telescope we have discovered PSR J1622-4950, a pulsar with a 4.3-s rotation period. Follow-up observations show that the pulsar has the highest inferred surface magnetic field of the known radio pulsars (B ~ 3e14 G), exhibits significant timing noise and appears to have an inverted spectrum. Unlike the vast majority of the known pulsar population, PSR J1622-4950 appears to switch off for many hundreds of days and even in its on-state exhibits extreme variability in its flux density. Furthermore, the integrated pulse profile changes sha…
The basic mechanism responsible for radio emission in radio-loud active galactic nuclei (AGNs) is assumed to be synchrotron radiation. We suggest here that radio emission in radio-quiet objects is also due to synchrotron radiation of particles accelerated in shocks. We consider generic shocks and study the resulting synchrotron properties. We estimate the synchrotron radio luminosity and compare it with the X-ray component produced by inverse Compton emission. We obtain that the radio to X-ray luminosity ratio is much smaller than unity, with values typical of radio-quiet sources. The predicte…
Extended very-high-energy (VHE; 0.1-100 TeV) $γ$-ray emission has been observed around several middle-aged pulsars and referred to as ``TeV halos". Their formation mechanism remains under debate. It is also unknown whether they are ubiquitous or related to certain subgroup of pulsars. With 2321 days of observation, the High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Gamma-Ray Observatory detected VHE $γ$-ray emission at the location of the radio-quiet pulsar PSR J0359+5414 with $>6σ$ significance. By performing likelihood tests with different spectral and spatial models and comparing the TeV spectrum wit…
To understand the impact of active galactic nuclei (AGN) on their host galaxies and large scale environment it is crucial to determine their total radiative power across all wavelengths (i.e., bolometric luminosity). In this contribution we describe how quasar accretion disk spectral energy distribution (SED) templates, parameterized by the black hole (BH) mass, Eddington ratio, and spin can be used to estimate their total radiated luminosity. To estimate the bolometric luminosity of AGN, we integrate the accretion disk SEDs from 1$μ$m to 10keV. Our approach self-consistently covers any gaps i…
We have analyzed the new deep {\it XMM-Newton} and {\it Chandra} observations of the energetic radio-quiet pulsar J1813$-$1246. The X-ray spectrum is non-thermal, very hard and absorbed. Based on spectral considerations, we propose that J1813 is located at a distance further than 2.5 kpc. J1813 is highly pulsed in the X-ray domain, with a light curve characterized by two sharp, asymmetrical peaks, separated by 0.5 in phase. We detected no significant X-ray spectral changes during the pulsar phase. We extended the available {\it Fermi} ephemeris to five years. We found two glitches. The $γ$-ray…
Several studies have shown the distribution of pulsars' magnetic inclination angles to be skewed towards low values compared with the distribution expected if the rotation and magnetic axes are placed randomly on the star. Here we focus on a sample of 28 $γ$-ray-detected pulsars using data taken as part of the Parkes telescope's \emph{FERMI} timing program. In doing so we find a preference in the sample for low magnetic inclination angles, $α$, in stark contrast to both the expectation that the magnetic and rotation axes are orientated randomly at the birth of the pulsar and to $γ$-ray-emissio…
We measure spin-down of the 59 ms X-ray pulsar Calvera by comparing the XMM-Newton discovery data from 2009 with new Chandra timing observations taken in 2013. Its period derivative is P-dot = (3.19+/-0.08)e-15, which corresponds to spin-down luminosity E-dot = 6.1e35 erg/s, characteristic age tau_c = P/2P-dot = 2.9e5 yr, and surface dipole magnetic field strength B_s = 4.4e11 G. These values rule out a mildly recycled pulsar, but Calvera could be an orphaned central compact object (anti-magnetar), with a magnetic field that was initially buried by supernova debris and is now reemerging and ap…
Aims: Intranight variation (or microvariation) is a common phenomenon of radio-loud BL Lac objects. However, it is not clear whether the recently found radio-quiet BL Lac objects have the same properties. The occurrence rate of intranight variation is helpful in distinguishing the mechanism of the continuum of radio-quiet BL Lac objects. Methods: We conducted a photometric monitoring of 8 radio-quiet BL Lac objects by the Xinglong 2.16m and Lijiang 2.4m telescopes. The differential light curves are calculated between each target and two comparison stars. To quantify the variation, the signific…
Galactic nuclei are promising sites for stellar origin black hole (BH) mergers, as part of merger hierarchies in deep potential wells. We show that binary black hole (BBH) merger rates in active galactic nuclei (AGN) should always exceed merger rates in quiescent galactic nuclei (nuclear star clusters, NSCs) around supermassive BHs (SMBHs) without accretion disks. This is primarily due to average binary lifetimes in AGN that are significantly shorter than in NSCs. The lifetime difference comes from rapid hardening of BBHs in AGN, such that their semi-major axes are smaller than the hard-soft b…
We study a sample of Narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies (NLS1) in their optical and radio features, in order to understand the differences between their radio silent, radio-loud and radio-quiet subclasses. We first show that the different redshift and mass distributions of radio-loud and -quiet NLS1s could be ascribed to observational biases. We then present a geometrical model according to which most of the different observational features of radio-loud and radio-quiet NLS1s are ascribed to the orientation of an intrinsically structured jet. We estimate the fraction of intrinsically jetted source…
We present first results from RoboPol, a novel-design optical polarimeter operating at the Skinakas Observatory in Crete. The data, taken during the May - June 2013 commissioning of the instrument, constitute a single-epoch linear polarization survey of a sample of gamma-ray - loud blazars, defined according to unbiased and objective selection criteria, easily reproducible in simulations, as well as a comparison sample of, otherwise similar, gamma-ray - quiet blazars. As such, the results of this survey are appropriate for both phenomenological population studies and for tests of theoretical p…
We investigate the hypothesis that γ-ray-quiet AGN have a larger tendency for jet bending than γ-ray-loud AGN, revisiting the analysis of Tingay, Murphy & Edwards (1998). We perform a statistical analysis using a large sample of 351 radio-loud AGN along with γ-ray identifications from the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT). Our results show no statistically significant differences in jet-bending properties between γ-ray-loud and γ-ray-quiet populations, indicating that jet bending is not a significant factor for γ-ray detection in AGN.
2009 has been an extraordinary year for gamma-ray pulsar astronomy and 2010 promises to be equally good. Not only have we registered an extraordinary increase in the number of pulsars detected in gamma rays, but we have also witnessed the birth of new sub-families: first of all, the radio-quiet gamma pulsars and later an ever growing number of millisecond pulsars, a real surprise. We started with a sample of 7 gamma-ray emitting neutron stars (6 radio pulsars and Geminga) and now the Fermi-LAT harvest encompasses 24 "Geminga-like" new gamma-ray pulsars, a dozen millisecond pulsars and about th…
We present preliminary results from an investigation into broad absorption line (BAL) variability within a sample of 41 radio-loud quasars (RLQs). Using 28 new Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) spectra along with earlier Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) or other archival data, we generate a total set of 50 pairs of BAL equivalent width measurements. Absorption variability in BAL RLQs typically consists of modest changes in the depth of trough segments, and variability is more common on longer rest-frame timescales; these tendencies are similar to previous findings for BAL radio-quiet quasars (RQQs).…
The {\it Fermi} satellite has detected $\sim$60 radio galaxies (RGs). In this study, we investigate the difference in the properties of X-ray spectra between GeV-loud RGs and GeV-quiet RGs. Our sample comprises 68 objects: 36 RGs detected with {\it Fermi} and 32 RGs not detected with gamma rays. We analyzed the X-ray spectra of these 68 objects using data from the {\it XMM-Newton}, {\it Chandra}, {\it NuSTAR}, and {\it Swift} satellites. Our results show that most GeV-loud RGs do not exhibit significant absorption, while $\sim$50\% of the GeV-quiet RGs exhibit significant absorption. This sugg…
Pulsar death line can be defined in $P-\dot{P}$ diagram. Traditionally, radio-loud pulsars are supposed to locate above the death line where is the radio-loud region. With the development of observational equipment, the observational properties of the neutron star are remarkably diverse. In $P-\dot{P}$ diagram, some of the special sources are radio-quiet but lie above the death line. From the definition of the pulsar death line, different equation of states for neutron star or strange star results in different death lines. We discuss the influence of the equation of state on the pulsar death l…
It has been suggested that some radio-loud narrow-line Seyfert 1 contain relativistic jets, on the basis of their flat-spectrum radio nuclei and studies on variability. We present preliminary results of an ongoing investigation of the X-ray and multiwavelength properties of 5 radio-loud NLS1 based on archival data from Swift and XMM-Newton. Some sources present interesting characteristics, very uncharacteristic for a radio-quiet narrow-line Seyfert 1, such as very hard X-ray spectra, and correlated optical and ultraviolet variability. However, none of the studied sources show conclusive eviden…
