Related papers: High redshift blazars
Blazars are very broadband cosmic sources with spectra spanning over twenty orders of magnitude in frequency, down to the 100 MHz regime in the radio range, up to VHE at several tens of TeV. The modelling of their spectral energy…
The Fermi Gamma-ray Observatory discovered about a thousand extragalactic sources emitting energy from 100 MeV to 100 GeV. The majority of these sources belong to the class of blazars characterized by a quasi-featureless optical spectrum…
Blazars exhibit flux and spectral variations of largest amplitude at the highest frequencies. Therefore, monitoring their variability at X- and gamma-rays is the most effective tool to peer into the mighty powerhouse of these sources. High…
Relativistic jets from supermassive black holes are among the most powerful and luminous astrophysical systems in Universe. We propose that the open magnetic field lines through the black hole, which drive a strongly magnetized jet, may…
The epochs of origin of the first stars and galaxies, and subsequent growth of the first supermassive black holes, are among the most fundamental questions. Observations of the highest redshift Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) will be the most…
Volonteri et al. (2011) found that the number of radio-loud quasars above redshift 4 calculated from the luminosity function (based upon Swift/BAT observations) is much smaller than the number estimated from the known high-redshift beamed…
Bright blazars were found to be prominent neutrino sources, and a number of IceCube events were associated with them over recent years. A particularly strong observational connection is present between neutrinos and blazars with bright,…
Extremely high-peaked BL Lac objects - also named extreme blazars - are among the most energetic and persistent extragalactic accelerators in the Universe, defined by a synchrotron emission peaking above $10^{17}$ Hz in X-rays. Such…
Quasars at large redshifts provide a powerful probe of structure formation in the early universe. Several arguments suggest that the formation of ellipticals and massive bulges may have involved an early quasar phase. At very large…
Being dominated by non-thermal emission from aligned relativistic jets, blazars allow us to elucidate the physics of extragalactic jets, and, ultimately, how energy is extracted from the central black hole. Crucial information about jet…
Blazars, radio-loud active galactic nuclei with the relativistic jet closely aligned with the line of sight, dominate the extragalactic sky observed at gamma-ray energies, above 100 MeV. We discuss some of the emission properties of these…
We present a study of quasars with very redward asymmetric (RA) ultraviolet (UV) broad emission lines (BELs). An excess of redshifted emission has been previously shown to occur in the BELs of radio loud quasars and is most extreme in…
Neutrinos are the most elusive particles in the Universe, capable of traveling nearly unimpeded across it. Despite the vast amount of data collected, a long standing and unsolved issue is still the association of high-energy neutrinos with…
Blazars are among the most energetic and violent objects in the universe. By observing blazars at very high energies (VHE, E > 100 GeV) we can better understand blazar emission mechanisms, jet structure, black hole accretion and the…
Jetted active galactic nuclei (AGNs) are the principal extragalactic $\gamma$-ray sources. Fermi-detected high-redshift ($z>3$) blazars are jetted AGNs thought to be powered by massive, rapidly spinning supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in…
High-redshift quasars are important to study galaxy and active galactic nuclei (AGN) evolution, test cosmological models, and study supermassive black hole growth. Optical searches for high-redshift sources have been very successful, but…
There is general consensus that active galactic nuclei (AGNs) derive their radiating power from a supermassive black hole (SMBH) that accretes matter. Yet, their precise powering mechanisms and the resulting growth of the SMBH are poorly…
We study a sample of 30 high-redshift blazars ($z>2.5$) by means of spectra and the radiation mechanism with Fermi Large Area Telescope $\gamma$-ray observations spanning 15 years. Three models -- the power law, power law with an…
I discuss two programs to study radio-loud quasars at high (z>4) redshift. Quasars are the most luminous, non-transient objects known and are observed to the earliest cosmic epochs. At lower redshifts, radio-loud quasars are associated with…
High energy emission from blazars is thought to arise in a relativistic jet launched by a supermassive black hole. The emission site must be far from the hole and the jet relativistic, in order to avoid absorption of the photons. In extreme…