English

The spectral variability in radio-loud quasars

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2015-06-15 v1

Abstract

The spectral variability of a sample of 44 flat-spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs) and 18 steep-spectrum radio quasars (SSRQs) in the SDSS stripe 82 region is investigated. Twenty-five of 44 FSRQs show a bluer-when-brighter trend (BWB), while only one FSRQ shows a redder-when-brighter trend, which is in contrast to our previous results. Eight of 18 SSRQs display a BWB. We found an anti-correlation between the Eddington ratio and the variability amplitude in r band for SSRQs, which is similar to that in radio-quiet AGNs. This implies that the thermal emission from the accretion disk may be responsible for the variability in SSRQs. The spectral variability from the SDSS multi-epoch spectroscopy also shows BWB for several SSRQs, consistent with that from photometry.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1304.2835,
  title  = {The spectral variability in radio-loud quasars},
  author = {Minfeng Gu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1304.2835},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

5 pages, 3 figures, accepted to JApA, conference proceeding paper for Variability of Blazars - From Jansky to Fermi (VBJF), Dec. 13-16, 2012, Guangzhou, China