Radio core dominance of Fermi blazars
Abstract
During the first 4 years of mission, Fermi/LAT detected 1444 blazars (3FGL) (Ackermann et al. in Astrophys. J. 810:14, 2015). Fermi/LAT observations of blazars indicate that Fermi blazars are luminous and strongly variable with variability time scales, for some cases, as short as hours. Those observations suggest a strong beaming effect in Fermi/LAT blazars. In the present work, we will investigate the beaming effect in Fermi/LAT blazars using a core-dominance parameter, R = S_{core}/ S_{ext.}, where S_{core} is the core emission, while S_{ext.} is the extended emission. We compiled 1335 blazars with available core-dominance parameter, out of which 169 blazars have γ-ray emission (from 3FGL). We compared the core-dominance parameters, log R, between the 169 Fermi-detected blazars (FDBs) and the rest non-Fermi-detected blazars (non-FDBs), and we found that the averaged values are < log Rrangle = 0.99±0.87 for FDBs and < log Rrangle = -0.62±1.15 for the non-FDBs. A K-S test shows that the probability for the two distributions of FDBs and non-FDBs to come from the same parent distribution is near zero (P =9.12×10^{-52}). Secondly, we also investigated the variability index (V.I.) in the γ-ray band for FDBs, and we found V.I.=(0.12 ±0.07) log R+(2.25±0.10), suggesting that a source with larger log R has larger V.I. value. Thirdly, we compared the mean values of radio spectral index for FDBs and non-FDBs, and we obtained < α_{radio}rangle =0.06±0.35 for FDBs and < α_{radio}rangle =0.57±0.46 for non-FDBs. If γ-rays are composed of two components like radio emission (core and extended components), then we can expect a correlation between log R and the γ-ray spectral index. When we used the radio core-dominance parameter, log R, to investigate the relationship, we found that the spectral index for the core component is α_{γ}|_{core} = 1.11 (a photon spectral index of α_{γ}^{ph}|_{core} = 2.11) and that for the extended component is α_{γ}|_{ext.} = 0.70 (a photon spectral index of α_{γ}^{ph}|_{ext.} = 1.70). Some discussions are also presented.
- Publication:
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Astrophysics and Space Science
- Pub Date:
- July 2016
- DOI:
- 10.1007/s10509-016-2822-0
- Bibcode:
- 2016Ap&SS.361..237P
- Keywords:
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- Galaxies: active galactic nuclei (AGNs);
- Galaxies: jets;
- Galaxies: quasars