Unifying Black Hole Jets: The Connection between radio-loud AGNs and Gamma-ray Bursts
Abstract
Radio-loud AGNs and gamma-ray bursts produce powerful relativistic jets and their central engines share the same basic astrophysical ingredients, despite the vastly different mass scales. An outstanding question is how the jet physics scales from GRBs up to AGNs.Using Fermi and Swift observations as well as data obtained with several other observatories, we show that the jets produced by blazars and long-duration GRBs exhibit similar correlations between the kinetic power and apparent gamma-ray luminosity, with AGNs and GRBs lying at the low and high-luminosity end, respectively, of the trend. After carrying out the beaming correction for these two populations, we find evidence that blazars and GRBs follow the same correlation between the intrinsic gamma-ray luminosity and kinetic power. This result implies that jet production and energy dissipation mechanisms are remarkably similar across over 9 orders of magnitude in jet power, establishing a physical analogy between AGN and GRBs. Our results indicate that these jets convert their internal energy into radiation with efficiencies exceeding 10%. We will discuss the implications of these results in terms of the properties of the central engines of AGNs and GRBs, in particular the bulk Lorentz factor, jet opening angles and mass accretion rates.
- Publication:
-
39th COSPAR Scientific Assembly
- Pub Date:
- July 2012
- Bibcode:
- 2012cosp...39.1355N