Compton Dominance and the Blazar Sequence

Abstract

Does the "blazar sequence" exist, or is it a result of a selection effect, due to the difficulty in measuring the redshifts of blazars with both high synchrotron peak frequencies (\gtrsim 10^{15} Hz) and luminosities (\gtrsim 10^{46} erg s^{-1})? We explore this question with a sample of blazars from the Second Catalog of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) from the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT). The Compton dominance, the ratio of the peak of the Compton to the synchrotron peak luminosities, is essentially a redshift-independent quantity, and thus crucial to answering this question. We find that a correlation exists between Compton dominance and the peak frequency of the synchrotron component for all blazars in the sample, including ones with unknown redshift. We then construct a simple model to explain the blazar properties in our sample, where the difference between sources is due to only the magnetic field of the blazar jet emitting region, the external radiation field energy density, and the jet angle to the line of sight, with the magnetic field strength and external energy density being correlated. This model can reproduce the trends of the blazars in the sample, and predicts blazars may be discovered in the future with high synchrotron peak frequencies and luminosities. At the same time the simple model reproduces the lack of high-synchrotron peaked blazars with high Compton dominances (\gtrsim 1).

12 pages, 9 figures, 3 tables. Accepted by ApJ

References in corpus (13)

• Probing the Inner Jet of the Quasar PKS 1510-089 with Multi-waveband Monitoring during Strong Gamma-ray Activity
• Bright AGN Source List from the First Three Months of the Fermi Large Area Telescope All-Sky Survey
• The Radius-Luminosity Relationship for Active Galactic Nuclei: The Effect of Host-Galaxy Starlight on Luminosity Measurements
• Hot and cold gas accretion and feedback in radio-loud active galaxies
• Synchrotron Self-Compton Analysis of TeV X-ray Selected BL Lacertae Objects
• The blazar sequence: a new perspective
• Gamma-Ray Studies of Blazars: Synchro-Compton Analysis of Flat Spectrum Radio Quasars
• Rapid variability in TeV blazars: the case of PKS 2155-304
• The Blazar Sequence: Validity and Predictions
• The Parsec-Scale Jets of the TeV Blazars H 1426+428, 1ES 1959+650, and PKS 2155-304: 2001-2004
• Mid-Infrared Fine Structure Line Ratios in Active Galactic Nuclei Observed with Spitzer IRS: Evidence for Extinction by the Torus
• Bulk Comptonization spectra in blazars
• Blazar synchrotron emission of instantaneously power-law injected electrons under linear synchrotron, non-linear SSC, and combined synchrotron-SSC cooling

Cited by in corpus (93)

• The Third Catalog of Active Galactic Nuclei Detected by the Fermi Large Area Telescope
• The Cosmic Evolution of Fermi BL Lacertae Objects
• Relativistic Jets in Active Galactic Nuclei und Microquasars
• On the origin of gamma rays in Fermi blazars: beyond the broad line region
• The Fourth Catalog of Active Galactic Nuclei Detected by the Fermi Large Area Telescope -- Data Release 3
• Very-high-energy gamma-rays from the Universe's middle age: detection of the z=0.940 blazar PKS 1441+25 with MAGIC
• Equipartition Gamma-Ray Blazars and the Location of the Gamma-Ray Emission Site in 3C 279
• The Central Engines of Fermi Blazars
• General Physical Properties of CGRaBS Blazars
• Active galactic nuclei at gamma-ray energies
• Connection between optical and gamma-ray variability in blazars
• Leptonic and Hadronic Radiative Processes in Supermassive-Black-Hole Jets
• The Extragalactic Gamma-ray Sky in the Fermi era
• Systematic Study of Gamma-ray bright Blazars with Optical Polarization and Gamma-ray Variability
• The physical properties of Fermi BL Lac objects jets
• Unveiling the nature of the unidentified gamma-ray sources IV: the $\text{Swift}$ catalog of potential X-ray counterparts
• Multifrequency studies of the narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxy SBS 0846+513
• Why Haven't Many of the Brightest Radio Loud Blazars Been Detected by Fermi ?
• General Physical Properties of Gamma-ray Emitting Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 Galaxies
• Fourier Analysis of Blazar Variability
• The most powerful flaring activity from the NLSy1 PMN J0948+0022
• Quasi-periodic behaviour in the optical and γ-ray light curves of blazars 3C 66A and B2 1633+38
• Hunting for treasures among the Fermi unassociated sources: a multi-wavelength approach
• Investigation of the correlation patterns and the Compton dominance variability of Mrk 421 in 2017
• The physical properties of $Fermi$-4LAC flat spectrum radio quasars
• Blazars at the Cosmic Dawn
• A spine-sheath model for strong-line blazars
• The unusual multiwavelength properties of the gamma-ray source PMNJ1603-4904
• Testing emission models on the extreme blazar 2WHSP J073326.7+515354 detected at very high energies with the MAGIC telescopes
• Extreme Blazars Studied with Fermi-LAT and Suzaku: 1ES 0347-121 and Blazar Candidate HESS J1943+213
• Basic properties of Fermi blazars and the "blazar sequence"
• TeV-peaked candidate BL Lac objects
• Understanding the TeV emission from a distant blazar PKS 1424+240 in a lepto-hadronic jet model
• Gamma-ray observations of low-luminosity active galactic nuclei
• Near-Equipartition Jets with Log-Parabola Electron Energy Distribution and the Blazar Spectral-Index Diagrams
• On the location of the gamma-ray emission region for 21 flat spectrum radio quasars with quasi-simultaneous observations
• New High-z Fermi BL Lacs with the Photometric Dropout Technique
• The awakening of the gamma-ray narrow-Line Seyfert 1 galaxy PKS 1502+036
• The detection of the blazar S4 0954+65 at very-high-energy with the MAGIC telescopes during an exceptionally high optical state
• Fourier Analysis of Blazar Variability: Klein-Nishina Effects and the Jet Scattering Environment
• The sequence of Compton dominance in blazars based on data from WISE and Fermi/LAT
• The TANAMI Multiwavelength Program: Dynamic SEDs of Southern Blazars
• The Intrinsic Properties of Multiwavelength Energy Spectra for Fermi Teraelectronvolt Blazars
• Kinetic simulations of relativistic magnetic reconnection with synchrotron and inverse Compton cooling
• The Radio/Gamma Connection of Blazars from High to Low Radio Frequencies
• The physical properties of \textit{Fermi} TeV BL Lac objects jets
• Particle acceleration and synchrotron self-Compton emission in blazar jets I : an application to the quiescent emission
• A statistical study of the optical spectral variability in gamma-ray blazars
• Curvature of the spectral energy distribution, the dominant process for inverse Compton component and other jet properties in Fermi 2LAC blazars
• Gamma-ray Emitting Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 Galaxies: Past, Present, and Future
• Hunting extreme BL Lacertae blazars with Fermi-LAT
• High energy emission component, population, and contribution to the extragalactic gamma-ray background of gamma-ray emitting radio galaxies
• Accretion Disk MHD Winds and Blazar Classification
• GB6 J2113+1121: A multi-wavelength flaring gamma-ray blazar temporally and spatially coincident with the neutrino event IceCube-191001A
• Emitting Electron Spectra and Acceleration Processes in the Jet of PKS 0447-439
• First-Principle Prediction of X-ray Polarization from Magnetic Reconnection in High-Frequency BL Lacs
• Inter-Plasmoid Compton Scattering and the Compton Dominance of BL Lacs
• The first GeV flare of the radio-loud narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxy PKS 2004-447
• A Method for Locating High Energy Dissipation Region in Blazar
• Formation of very hard electron and gamma-ray spectra of flat spectrum radio quasar in fast-cooling regime
• What determines the observational differences of blazars?
• Dynamic changes of emitting electron distribution in the jet of 3C 279: signatures of acceleration and cooling
• Optical and Gamma-Ray Variability Behaviors of 3C 454.3 from 2006 to 2011
• On the origin of GeV spectral break for Fermi blazars: 3C 454.3
• The influence of the magnetic field on the spectral properties of blazars
• The jets-accretion relation, mass-luminosity relation in Fermi blazars
• Multi-Frequency Study of Spectral Indices of BL Lacertae Objects and Flat Spectrum Radio Quasars
• Multiband Observations of the Quasar PKS 2326-502 during Active and Quiescent Gamma-Ray States in 2010-2012
• Formation of the Electronic Spectrum in Relativistic Jets of Gamma-Ray Blazars
• From the Fermi blazar sequence to the relation between Fermi blazars and gamma-ray Narrow-line Seyfert 1 Galaxies
• Blazar jets launched with similar energy per baryon, independently of their power
• Radio Core-Dominance of Fermi-Blazars: Implication for Blazar Unification
• A complete sample of LSP blazars fully described in $\gamma$-rays. New $\gamma$-ray detections and associations with Fermi-LAT
• Using the Markov Chain Monte Carlo method to study the physical properties GeV-TeV BL Lac objects
• Two active states of the narrow-line gamma-ray-loud AGN GB 1310+487
• On the influence of a Hybrid Thermal-Non thermal distribution in the Internal Shocks model for blazars
• Contemporaneous broadband observations of three high-redshift BL Lac Objects
• Multi-wavelength study of OT 081: broadband modelling of a transitional blazar
• Testing the Blazar Sequence with Spectra of Recently Discovered Dim Blazars from the Fermi Unassociated Catalog
• On the Unified View of Extragalactic Sources based on their Broadband Emission Properties
• On the Evolution of Seyfert galaxies, BL Lacertae objects and Flat-spectrum radio quasars
• Very-high-energy gamma-ray detection and long-term multi-wavelength view of the flaring blazar B2 1811+31
• Is BZB J1450+5201 the most distant $\gamma$-ray BL Lacertae object?
• A numerical study on the role of instabilities on multi-wavelength emission signatures of blazar jets
• Understanding the Broadband Emission Process of 3C 279 through Longterm Spectral Analysis
• Constraints on the AGN flares as sources of ultra-high energy cosmic rays from the Fermi-LAT observations
• Constraining the $\gamma$-ray Emission Region for Fermi-Detected FSRQs by the Seed Photon Approach
• A one-parameter two-zone leptonic model for the blazar sequence
• Modeling Fermi Large Area Telescope and Multiwavelength Data from Blazars
• A Panchromatic View of Relativistic Jets in Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 Galaxies
• The correlations of multi-wave band luminosity and BLR luminosity in Fermi 2LAC blazars
• The blazar sequence revised
• A long-term multiwavelength study of the flat spectrum radio quasar OP 313