Jetted Active Galactic Nuclei

Abstract

Most of the electromagnetic output of blazars (BL Lac objects and Flat Spectrum Radio Quasars) comes out in the gamma-ray band, making the Large Area Telescope [0.1-100 GeV] onboard the Fermi satellite and the Cherenkov telescopes crucial for gather crucial data and thus to understand their physics. These data are complemented by the observations of the Swift satellite in the X-ray and optical-UV bands, and by ground based optical and radio telescopes. This rich coverage of the spectrum allows a robust modelling, from which important trends start to emerge. In powerful sources we see the contribution of the accretion disk that, once modeled, give us the black hole mass and the accretion rate. Even when not directly visible, the disk luminosity can be derived through the broad emission lines. Therefore we start to know the jet power, the disk luminosity, and the black hole mass, 3 crucial ingredients if we want to draw a general scenario. At the start, jets are believed to be magnetically dominated. And yet, on the scale where they emit most of their luminosity, their power is already in the form of kinetic energy of particles. Relativistic jets are formed for a very broad range of the disk luminosity, from close to Eddington down to at least 1e-4 Eddington. Their power correlates with the accretion rate, and can be even more powerful than the accretion disk luminosity.

12 pages, 4 figures, invited talk at the HEPRO III meeting: High Energy Phenomena in Relativistic Outflows (Barcelona, June 2011). Editors: J.M. Paredes, M. Ribo, F.A. Aharonian and G.E. Romero

References in corpus (13)

• Evidence for strong extragalactic magnetic fields from Fermi observations of TeV blazars
• Fast TeV variability in blazars: jets in a jet
• The power of blazar jets
• Bright AGN Source List from the First Three Months of the Fermi Large Area Telescope All-Sky Survey
• MAGIC discovery of VHE Emission from the FSRQ PKS 1222+21
• The transition between BL Lac objects and Flat Spectrum Radio Quasars
• Time Delay of Cascade Radiation for TeV Blazars and the Measurement of the Intergalactic Magnetic Field
• Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope Observations of the Gamma-ray Outburst from 3C 454.3 in November 2010
• Fermi Large Area Telescope Observations of Misaligned AGN
• The accretion mechanism in low-power radio galaxies
• Strong New Constraints on the Extragalactic Background Light in the Near- to Mid-IR
• TeV variability in blazars: how fast can it be?
• Dynamical Black Hole Masses of BL Lac Objects from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Gamma-Ray Bursts as Sources of Strong Magnetic Fields
• The effects of sub-shells in highly magnetized relativistic flows
• Energetic and Broad Band Spectral Distribution of Emission from Astronomical Jets
• 2D Relativistic MHD Simulations of the Kruskal-Schwarzschild Instability in a Relativistic Striped Wind