Related papers: What Powers the Most Relativistic Jets? II: Flat S…
The mechanisms responsible for the production of relativistic jets from supermassive black holes (SMBHs) accreting at near-Eddington rates are not well-understood. Simple theoretical expectations indicate that SMBHs in quasars accrete via…
We constructed a sample of 185 Flat Spectrum Radio Quasars (FSRQs) by cross-correlating the Shen et al.'s SDSS DR3 X-ray quasar sample with FIRST and GB6 radio catalogues. From the spectrum energy distribution (SED) constructed using…
The Fermi and Swift satellites, together with ground based Cherenkov telescopes, has greatly improved our knowledge of blazars, namely Flat Spectrum Radio Quasars and BL Lac objects, since all but the most powerful emit most of their…
With the release of the first year Fermi catalogue, the number of blazars detected above 100 MeV lying at high redshift has been largely increased. There are 28 blazars at z>2 in the "clean" sample. All of them are Flat Spectrum Radio…
We discuss the relation between the power carried by relativistic jets and the nuclear power provided by accretion, for a group of blazars including FSRQs and BL Lac objects. They are characterized by good quality broad band X-ray data…
We have not identified for sure what is the mechanism launching, accelerating and collimating relativistic jets. The two most likely possibilities are the gravitational energy of the accreting matter or the rotational energy of a spinning…
The characteristic properties of blazars (rapid variability, strong polarization, high brightness) are widely attributed to a powerful relativistic jet oriented close to our line of sight. Despite the spectral energy distributions (SEDs)…
We discuss the features that mark the Flat Spectrum Radio Quasars from the BL Lacertae objects. We propose that FSRQs exceeding L = 10^{46} erg/s are powered by black hole accreting at rates dm/dt = 1 - 10; their power is dominated by the…
Theoretical models for the production of relativistic jets from active galactic nuclei predict that jet power arises from the spin and mass of the central black hole, as well as the magnetic field near the event horizon. The physical…
Flat-Spectrum Radio Quasars (FSRQs) are among the most energetic and powerful active galactic nuclei, often exhibiting jet powers comparable to or exceeding the Eddington luminosity. In this work, we performed broadband spectral energy…
We have assembled a sample of 37 RLQs that have been imaged with the HST in order to investigate their black hole masses, accretion rates, and the structure of their accretion disks. The black hole masses were estimated from the…
Most of the electromagnetic output of blazars (BL Lac objects and Flat Spectrum Radio Quasars) comes out in the gamma-ray band, making the Large Area Telescope [0.1-100 GeV] onboard the Fermi satellite and the Cherenkov telescopes crucial…
The SEDs of 18 GeV FSRQs are collected and compiled from literature, in which both the jet emission and the accretion disk radiation can be observed, in order to investigate the correlations among their jet power (P_jet), accretion disk…
The new high energy data coming mainly from the Fermi and Swift satellites and from the ground based Cerenkov telescopes are making possible to study not only the energetics of blazar jets, but also their connection to the associated…
The dramatic relativistic jets pointing directly at us in BL Lac objects can be well modelled by bulk motion beaming of synchrotron self-Compton emission powered by a low Eddington fraction accretion flow. Nearly 500 of these AGN are seen…
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…
The flat spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs) are a sub-class of blazars characterised by prominent optical emission lines and a collimated large-scale jet along the observer line of sight. An X-ray spectral flattening has been reported in FSRQs…
Flat spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs) constitute a class of jetted active galaxies characterized by a very luminous accretion disk, prominent and rapidly moving line-emitting cloud structures (Broad Line Region, BLR), and a surrounding dense…
The $Fermi$ blazar observations show a strong correlation between $\gamma$-ray luminosities and spectral indices. BL Lac objects are less luminous with harder spectra than flat-spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs). Interestingly FSRQs are evident…
In this proceedings we summarize our recent letter (Jarvis & McLure 2002) where we suggested that by correcting for the inevitable effects of inclination, the black-hole masses of flat-spectrum quasars (FSQ) with intrinsically powerful…