The redshift distribution of BL Lacs and FSRQs

Abstract

Flat spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs) and BL Lacs are powerful jet producing active galactic nuclei associated with supermassive black holes accreting at high and low Eddington rates, respectively. Based on the Millennium Simulation, Gardner and Done (2014; 2018) have predicted their redshift distribution by appealing to ideas from the spin paradigm in a way that exposes a need for a deeper discussion on three interrelated issues: (1) an overprediction of BL Lacs compared to flat spectrum radio quasars; (2) a difference in FSRQ and BL Lac distributions; (3) a need for powerful but different jets at separated cosmic times. Beginning with Gardner and Done's determination of Fermi observable FSRQs based on the distribution of thermal accretion across cosmic time from the Millennium Simulation, we connect FSRQs to BL Lacs by way of the gap paradigm for black hole accretion and jet formation to address the above issues in a unified way. We identify a physical constraint in the paradigm for the numbers of BL Lacs that naturally leads to separate peaks in time for different albeit powerful jets. In addition, we both identify as puzzling and ascribe physical significance to a tail end in the BL Lac curve versus redshift that is unseen in the redshift distribution for FSRQs.

arXiv comment15 pages, 7 figures, Accepted for publication in the Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics journal

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Cited by in corpus (3)

• Optical spectroscopic survey of a sample of Unidentified Fermi objects
• FR0 radio galaxies and their place in the radio morphology classification
• VHE $\gamma$-ray observations of bright BL Lacs with the Large-Sized Telescope prototype (LST-1) of the CTAO