paper

What Types of Jets does Nature Make: A New Population of Radio Quasars

arXiv:astro-ph/0301227 · doi:10.1086/373899

Abstract

We use statistical results from a large sample of about 500 blazars, based on two surveys, the Deep X-ray Radio Blazar Survey (DXRBS), nearly complete, and the RASS-Green Bank survey (RGB), to provide new constraints on the spectral energy distribution of blazars, particularly flat-spectrum radio quasars (FSRQ). This reassessment is prompted by the discovery of a population of FSRQ with spectral energy distribution similar to that of high-energy peaked BL Lacs. The fraction of these sources is sample dependent, being ~ 10% in DXRBS and ~ 30% in RGB (and reaching ~ 80% for the Einstein Medium Sensitivity Survey). We show that these ``X-ray strong'' radio quasars, which had gone undetected or unnoticed in previous surveys, indeed are the strong-lined counterparts of high-energy peaked BL Lacs and have synchrotron peak frequencies, nu_peak, much higher than ``classical'' FSRQ, typically in the UV band for DXRBS. Some of these objects may be 100 GeV - TeV emitters, as are several known BL Lacs with similar broadband spectra. Our large, deep, and homogeneous DXRBS sample does not show anti-correlations between nu_peak and radio, broad line region, or jet power, as expected in the so-called ``blazar sequence'' scenario. However, the fact that FSRQ do not reach X-ray-to-radio flux ratios and nu_peak values as extreme as BL Lacs and the elusiveness of high nu_peak - high-power blazars suggest that there might be an intrinsic, physical limit to the synchrotron peak frequency that can be reached by strong-lined, powerful blazars. Our findings have important implications for the study of jet formation and physics and its relationship to other properties of active galactic nuclei.

arXiv comment15 pages, 12 figures. Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal (May 1 2003 issue). Postscript file also available at http://www.stsci.edu/~padovani/unif_papers.html

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