Broadband nuclear emission in two radio-loud broad absorption line quasars

Aims: We present modelling and interpretation of the continuum broadband emission of two broad absorption line (BAL) quasars. The X-ray weakness of BAL quasars in comparison to non-BAL objects is possibly caused by the absorption of X-ray emission by the shielding material near the equatorial plane. On the other hand, the radio-loud BAL quasars are more X-ray loud than the radio-quiet ones. This suggests that part of the X-ray emission may arise from the radio jet. To investigate this possibility, we modelled the nuclear spectra of two BAL quasars in the whole available energy range.
Methods: We focus on the emission from the very centres of these two objects, not greater than several parsecs. The source of emission was approximated by a single, homogeneous component that produces synchrotron and inverse-Compton radiation. The simplicity of the model allowed us to estimate the basic physical parameters of the emitting regions, using a universal analytic approach. Such methods have already been proposed to estimate basic physical parameters in blazars. For the first time, in a simplified form we propose this solution for quasars. In addition, we modelled the radiation spectra of the accretion disk and its corona to compare them with the jets' spectra.
Results: We find that in the case of radio and X-ray luminous high-redshift object 3C 270.1, the nuclear X-ray continuum is dominated by the non-thermal, inverse-Compton emission from the innermost parts of the radio jet. However, the radio core of the lobe-dominated PG 1004+130 is probably too weak to produce significant part of the observed X-ray emission. A large contribution from the X-ray emitting accretion disk and corona is produced in our model for a sufficiently high mass of the black hole. However, it then exceeds the observed flux. Because the large intrinsic absorption was postulated recently by the NuSTAR observations, we propose that the disk-corona component may still account for the X-rays produced in this source. This part of the spectrum must nevertheless be dominated by the X-ray jet. The results of our modelling show that the jet-linked X-ray emission is present in both strong and weak radio sources, but its fraction seems to scale with the radio jet power.

Appendix A is available in electronic form at http://www.aanda.org