The Central Engines of Fermi Blazars

Abstract

We present a catalog of central engine properties, i.e., black hole mass (mbh) and accretion luminosity (ld), for a sample of 1077 blazars detected with the Fermi~Large Area Telescope. This includes broad emission line systems and blazars whose optical spectra lack emission lines but dominated by the absorption features arising from the host galaxy. The average mbh for the sample is $⟨\log M_{\mathrm{BH},\mathrm{all}msun}⟩=8.60$ and there are evidences suggesting the association of more massive black holes with absorption line systems. Our results indicate a bi-modality of ld~in Eddington units (ld/ledd) with broad line objects tend to have a higher accretion rate (ld/ledd$>$0.01). We have found that ld/ledd and Compton dominance (CD, the ratio of the inverse Compton to synchrotron peak luminosities) are positively correlated at $>$5$\sigma$ confidence level, suggesting that the latter can be used to reveal the state of accretion in blazars. Based on this result, we propose a CD based classification scheme. Sources with CD$>$1 can be classified as High-Compton Dominated or HCD blazars, whereas, that with CD$\lesssim$1 are Low-Compton Dominated (LCD) objects. This scheme is analogous to that based on the mass accretion rate proposed in the literature, however, it overcomes the limitation imposed by the difficulty in measuring ld and mbh for objects with quasi-featureless spectra. We conclude that the overall physical properties of Fermi blazars are likely to be controlled by the accretion rate in Eddington units. The catalog is made public at http://www.ucm.es/blazars/engines and Zenodo.

arXiv commentto appear in the ApJ Supplement series

References in corpus (131)

• Maps of Dust IR Emission for Use in Estimation of Reddening and CMBR Foregrounds
• Astropy: A Community Python Package for Astronomy
• The Astropy Project: Building an inclusive, open-science project and status of the v2.0 core package
• A Fundamental Relation Between Supermassive Black Holes and Their Host Galaxies
• Coevolution (Or Not) of Supermassive Black Holes and Host Galaxies
• The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey: Spectra and redshifts
• Parametric Recovery of Line-of-Sight Velocity Distributions from Absorption-Line Spectra of Galaxies via Penalized Likelihood
• MILES: A Medium resolution INT Library of Empirical Spectra
• The M-sigma and M-L Relations in Galactic Bulges and Determinations of their Intrinsic Scatter
• A Catalog of Quasar Properties from SDSS DR7
• The Sixteenth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Surveys: First Release from the APOGEE-2 Southern Survey and Full Release of eBOSS Spectra
• Fermi Large Area Telescope Fourth Source Catalog
• Determining Central Black Hole Masses in Distant Active Galaxies and Quasars. II. Improved Optical and UV Scaling Relationships
• The 6dF Galaxy Survey: Final Redshift Release (DR3) and Southern Large-Scale Structures
• A theoretical unifying scheme for gamma-ray bright blazars
• Evolutionary Stellar Population Synthesis with MILES. Part I: The Base Models and a New Line Index System
• The cosmological evolution of quasar black-hole masses
• An Empirical Ultraviolet Template for Iron Emission in Quasars as Derived from I Zw 1
• The power of relativistic jets is larger than the luminosity of their accretion disks
• The Fourth Catalog of Active Galactic Nuclei Detected by the Fermi Large Area Telescope
• The FIRST Bright Quasar Survey. II. 60 Nights and 1200 Spectra Later
• The transition between BL Lac objects and Flat Spectrum Radio Quasars
• Efficient Photometric Selection of Quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: II. ~1,000,000 Quasars from Data Release Six
• BAT AGN Spectroscopic Survey I: Spectral Measurements, Derived Quantities, and AGN Demographics
• Synchrotron Self-Compton Analysis of TeV X-ray Selected BL Lacertae Objects
• The Fermi blazar sequence
• Swift observations of the very intense flaring activity of Mrk 421 during 2006: I. Phenomenological picture of electron acceleration and predictions for the MeV/GeV emission
• The Cosmic Evolution of Fermi BL Lacertae Objects
• CGRaBS: An All-Sky Survey of Gamma-Ray Blazar Candidates
• The HST Survey of BL Lacertae Objects. II. Host Galaxies
• Spectral Classification of Quasars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: Eigenspectra; Redshift and Luminosity Effects
• Jets and accretion processes in Active Galactic Nuclei: further clues
• Advection-Dominated Accretion and Black Hole Event Horizons
• Active Galactic Nuclei in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: I. Sample Selection
• Spectroscopy of The Largest Ever Gamma-ray Selected BL Lac Sample
• Spectroscopy of Broad Line Blazars from 1LAC
• The Deep X-ray Radio Blazar Survey (DXRBS). I. Methods and First Results
• Gamma-Ray Studies of Blazars: Synchro-Compton Analysis of Flat Spectrum Radio Quasars
• 2SXPS: An improved and expanded Swift X-ray telescope point source catalog
• Distributions of Galaxy Spectral Types in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• From the Blazar Sequence to the Blazar Envelope: Revisiting the Relativistic Jet Dichotomy in Radio-loud AGN
• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping Project: Sample Characterization
• The Black Hole Mass - Spheroid Luminosity relation
• An evolutionary scenario for blazar unification
• TXS 0506+056, the first cosmic neutrino source, is not a BL Lac
• The Parkes Half-Jansky Flat-Spectrum Sample
• Properties of flat-spectrum radio-loud Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 Galaxies
• The Blazar Main Sequence
• Compton Dominance and the Blazar Sequence
• The spectrum of the Broad Line Region and the high-energy emission of powerful blazars
• An optical spectroscopic survey of the 3CR sample of radio galaxies with z<0.3. I. Presentation of the data
• The Properties of the X-Ray-Selected EMSS Sample of BL Lac Objects
• The Gamma-Ray Blazar Content of the Northern Sky
• A simplified view of blazars: the gamma-ray case
• The Deep X-ray Radio Blazar Survey (DXRBS). II. New Identifications
• Radio-loud Active Galaxies in the Northern ROSAT All-Sky Survey III: New Spectroscopic Identifications from the RGB BL Lac Survey
• ESO-VLT optical spectroscopy of BL Lac objects: II. New redshifts, featureless objects and classification assessments
• Blazar sequence - an artefact of Doppler boosting
• On the redshift of TeV BL Lac objects
• The Blazar Sequence: Validity and Predictions
• Multi-wavelength observations of 3C 279 during the extremely bright gamma-ray flare in 2014 March-April
• The jet-disc connection in AGN
• General Physical Properties of CGRaBS Blazars
• ESO-VLT optical spectroscopy of BL Lac objects: I. new redshifts
• Constraining Sub-Parsec Binary Supermassive Black Holes in Quasars with Multi-Epoch Spectroscopy. III. Candidates from Continued Radial Velocity Tests
• A uniform analysis of the Lyman alpha forest at z = 0-5: III. HST FOS Spectral Atlas
• Blazar Counterparts for 3EG Sources at -40 < decl. < 0: Pushing South Through the Bulge
• Optical spectroscopic observations of $\gamma$-ray blazar candidates VI. Further observations from TNG, WHT, OAN, SOAR and Magellan telescopes
• Recovering Velocity Distributions via Penalized Likelihood
• The discovery of high power - high synchrotron peak blazars
• The Sedentary Survey of Extreme High Energy Peaked BL Lacs III. Results from Optical Spectroscopy
• The HST Survey of BL Lacertae Objects: Morphological Properties of Low redshift Host Galaxies
• Optical spectroscopic observations of gamma-ray blazar candidates II. The 2013 KPNO campaign in the Northern Hemisphere
• Spectroscopy of High Energy BL Lac Objects with X-shooter on the VLT
• Optical Spectroscopic Observations of Gamma-ray Blazar Candidates. V. TNG, KPNO, and OAN Observations of Blazar Candidates of Uncertain Type in the Northern Hemisphere
• An Optical-Near-Infrared Outburst with No Accompanying Gamma-Rays in the Blazar PKS 0208-512
• Blue Fermi Flat Spectrum Radio Quasars
• What governs the bulk velocity of the jet components in active galactic nuclei?
• Optical spectroscopic observations of gamma-ray blazar candidates IV. Results of the 2014 follow-up campaign
• Probing narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies in the southern hemisphere
• The Molonglo Reference Catalog 1-Jy radio source survey IV. Optical spectroscopy of a complete quasar sample
• Intrinsic Correlations for Flaring Blazars Detected by Fermi
• Optical spectroscopy of BL Lacertae objects. Broad lines, companion galaxies and redshift lower limits
• Optical spectroscopic survey of a sample of Unidentified Fermi objects
• Photometrically Triggered Keck Spectroscopy of Fermi BL Lac Objects
• Optical Spectroscopic Observations of Gamma-Ray Blazar Candidates. VII. Follow-up Campaign in the Southern Hemisphere
• Multiwavelength Observations of the Previously Unidentified Blazar RX J0648.7+1516
• Blazars at the Cosmic Dawn
• Optical spectroscopic survey of a sample of Unidentified Fermi objects: II
• BAT AGN Spectroscopic Survey: XVI. General Physical Characteristics of BAT Blazars
• Spectroscopic monitoring of the BL Lac object AO 0235+164
• Optical spectroscopy of BL Lac objects: TeV candidates
• A hard gamma-ray flare from 3C 279 in 2013 December
• Spectroscopy of 10 gamma-ray BL Lac objects at high redshift
• Optical spectroscopic observations of gamma-ray blazar candidates VIII: the 2016-2017 follow up campaign carried out at SPM, NOT, KPNO and SOAR telescopes
• ESO VLT Optical Spectroscopy of BL Lac Objects IV. New spectra and properties of the full sample
• Optical Spectroscopy of BL Lac Objects:new redshifts and mis-identified sources
• Dynamical Black Hole Masses of BL Lac Objects from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• The host galaxies of active galactic nuclei with powerful relativistic jets
• High redshift BL Lac objects: spectroscopy of candidates
• Multi-Frequency Observations of the Candidate Neutrino Emitting Blazar BZB J0955+3551
• Systematic Physical Characterization of the Gamma-Ray Spectra of 2FHL Blazars
• An AGN Identification for 3EG J2006-2321
• Spectroscopy of Optically Selected BL Lac Objects and their gamma-ray emission
• Correlation between optical and $\gamma$-ray flux variations in bright flat spectrum radio quasars
• Optical spectroscopic observations of gamma-ray blazar candidates. IX. Optical archival spectra and further observations from SOAR and OAGH
• Identifying the 3FHL catalog: CTIO results
• Optical spectroscopic observations of gamma-ray blazar candidates. X. Results from the 2018--2019 SOAR and OAN-SPM observations of blazar candidates of uncertain type
• Optical spectroscopic observations of low-energy counterparts of Fermi-LAT gamma-ray sources
• The High Redshift Blazar S5 0836+71: A Broadband Study
• The luminous host galaxies of high redshift BL Lac objects
• NuSTAR, Swift, and GROND observations of the flaring MeV blazar: PMN J0641$-$0320
• Discovery of a GeV blazar shining through the Galactic plane
• RXJ 1821.6+6827: a Cool Cluster at z=0.81 from the ROSAT NEP Survey
• The Micro-Arcsecond Scintillation-Induced Variability (MASIV) Survey III. Optical Identifications and New Redshifts
• Intra-Night Optical Variability Monitoring of Fermi Blazars: First Results from 1.3 m J C Bhattacharya Telescope
• High-redshift blazar identification for Swift J1656.3-3302
• Starbursts and black hole masses in X-shaped radio galaxies: Signatures of a merger event?
• The First Gamma-ray Emitting BL Lacertae Object at the Cosmic Dawn
• Optical Spectra of Candidate Southern Hemisphere International Celestial Reference Frame (ICRF) radio sources
• FERMI transient J1544-0649: a flaring radio-weak BL Lac
• Optical flux behaviour of a sample of Fermi blazars
• The redshift and broad band spectral energy distribution of NRAO 150
• Markarian 421's Unusual Satellite Galaxy
• Optical spectroscopic classification of a selection of Southern Hemisphere Fermi-LAT unclassified blazars
• E 0336-248 : A New BL Lac Object Found by an Old Einstein
• On the lensed blazar B0218+357
• The 2dF BL Lac Survey II
• Optical Spectra of Candidate International Celestial Reference Frame (ICRF) Flat-Spectrum Radio Sources. III
• Optical spectral characterization of the the TeV extreme blazar 2WHSP J073326.7+515354
• The Kinetically Dominated Quasar 3C~418

Cited by in corpus (37)

• The Fourth Catalog of Active Galactic Nuclei Detected by the Fermi Large Area Telescope -- Data Release 3
• Leptohadronic Multimessenger Modeling of 324 Gamma-Ray Blazars
• The Spectra of IceCube Neutrino (SIN) candidate sources -- II. Source Characterisation
• The relativistic jet and its central engine of $Fermi$ blazars
• The Estimation of Fundamental Physics Parameters for Fermi-LAT Blazars
• A Possible 3-Year Quasi-Periodic Oscillation in γ-Ray Emission from the FSRQ S5 1044+71
• An extensive study of blazar broad emission line: Changing-look blazars and Baldwin effect
• BASS XXXIII: Swift-BAT blazars and their jets through cosmic time
• High-energy neutrinos from X-rays flares of blazars frequently observed by the Swift X-Ray Telescope
• Hunting extreme BL Lacertae blazars with Fermi-LAT
• Constraining the PG 1553+113 binary hypothesis: interpreting hints of a new, 22-year period
• Discovering the Mass-Scaled Damping Timescale from Microquasars to Blazars
• The spectra of IceCube Neutrino (SIN) candidate sources -- III. Optical spectroscopy and source characterization of the full sample
• The Energy Budget in the Jet of High-frequency Peaked BL Lacertae Objects
• The Physical Properties of Changing-look Blazars
• Using Neural Networks to Differentiate Newly Discovered BL Lacs and FSRQs among the 4FGL Unassociated Sources Employing Gamma-ray, X-ray, UV/Optical and IR Data
• The optical spectral features of 27 Fermi blazars
• Broadband study of BL Lac during flare of 2020: Spectral evolution and emergence of HBL component
• Multiwavelength study of the gravitationally lensed blazar QSO B0218+357 between 2016 and 2020
• On the Origin of Gamma-ray Flares from Bright Fermi Blazars
• Optical spectroscopic characterization of Fermi blazar candidates of uncertain type with TNG and DOT: First Results
• Study of variability in long-term multiwavelength optical lightcurves of blazar AO 0235+164
• Exploring the Most Extreme Gamma-Ray Blazars Using Broadband Spectral Energy Distributions
• Moderate Correlation between the Accretion Disk and Jet Power in a Large Sample of Fermi Blazars
• The Study of Jet Formation Mechanism in Fermi Blazars
• Multiwavelength study of radio galaxy Pictor A: detection of western hotspot in far-UV and possible origin of high energy emissions
• Central Engine and Spectral Energy Distribution Properties of High Redshift Gamma Ray Blazars
• The Accretion Properties and Jet Mechanisms for the Low-Excitation Radio Galaxies
• Constraints on VHE gamma-ray emission of Flat Spectrum Radio Quasars with the MAGIC telescopes
• The Statistic Analysis of GeV Spectral Breaks in Bright Gamma-Ray FSRQs
• Accretion Disc-Jet Decomposition from the Optical-Near Infrared Monitoring of Fermi Blazars
• Broad band flux-density monitoring of radio sources with the Onsala twin telescopes
• Linking {\it Fermi} blazars and radio galaxies through accretion and jet radiation mechanisms
• Constraining the $\gamma$-ray Emission Region for Fermi-Detected FSRQs by the Seed Photon Approach
• The physical properties of candidate neutrino-emitter blazars
• A precessing jet from a supermassive black hole: multi-wavelength observations of S5 1044+71
• Parsec-scale jet precession and a putative supermassive binary black hole system in the blazar AO 0235+164