Related papers: Demographics of Blazars
Many aspects of the evolution of stars, and in particular the evolution of binary stars, remain beyond our ability to model them in detail. Instead, we rely on observations to guide our often phenomenological models and pin down uncertain…
We use the distributions of spectral indices of a large homogenous sample of Fermi-detected blazars to re-investigate the relationship between flat spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs) and subclasses of BL Lac objects (BL Lacs). We compute the…
BL Lac objects are an elusive and rare class of active galactic nuclei. For years their evolutionary behavior has appeared inconsistent with the trend observed in the population of AGN at large. The so-called ``negative'' evolution implies…
The overall spectra (SED) of blazars, from radio to gamma-ray energies, seem to obey well defined trends, with a continuity of properties between blazars of different classes. To quantify this statement we can either investigate their…
The impact of the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope on blazar research is reviewed. This includes a brief description of the Fermi Large Area Telescope, a summary of the various classes of extragalactic sources found in the First Large Area…
The excess numbers of blue galaxies at faint magnitudes is a subject of much controversy. Recent Hubble Space Telescope results has revealed a plethora of galaxies with peculiar morphologies tentatively identified as the evolving…
Variable \gama-ray emission from blazars, one of the most powerful classes of astronomical sources featuring relativistic jets, is a widely discussed topic. In this work, we present the results of a variability study of a sample of 20…
Jets are ubiquitous in accreting black holes. Often ignored, they may be a major contributor to the emitted spectral energy distribution for sub-Eddington black holes. For example, recent observations of radio-to-X-ray correlations and…
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…
We analyze average gamma-ray variability statistics for the sample of blazars detected by CGRO/EGRET. We re-reduce all the available EGRET observations and analyze light curves by Monte Carlo modeling of the variability statistics including…
Relativistic jets are one of the most powerful manifestations of the release of energy related to the supermassive black holes at the centre of active galactic nuclei (AGN). Their emission is observed across the entire electromagnetic…
We present an in-depth and systematic variability study of a sample of 20 powerful blazars, including 12 BL Lacs and 8 flat spectrum radio quasars, applying various analysis tools such as flux distribution, symmetry analysis, and time…
While we already seem to have a general scenario of the evolution of different types of galaxies, a complete and satisfactory understanding of the processes that led to the formation of all the variety of today's galaxy types is still…
Variability studies hold information on otherwise unresolvable regions in Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN). Population studies of large samples likewise have been very productive for our understanding of AGN. These two themes are coming…
We extend the mass-halo formalism for analytically generating power spectra to allow for the different clustering behavior observed in galaxy sub-populations. Although applicable to other separations, we concentrate our methods on a simple…
Blazars are active galactic nuclei with relativistic jets pointed almost directly at Earth. Blazars are characterized by strong, apparently stochastic flux variability at virtually all observed wavelengths and timescales, from minutes to…
Blazars, the peculiar class of active galactic nuclei (AGN), are known to show flux variations across the accessible electromagnetic spectrum. Though they have been studied extensively for their flux variability characteristics across…
Many blazars detected by the Fermi satellite, observed spectroscopically in the optical, are line-less, and have been classified as BL Lac objects. Optical-UV photometry of nearly one hundred of them allowed to determine the redshift for a…
We discuss the population dynamics with selection and random diffusion, keeping the total population constant, in a fitness landscape associated with Constraint Satisfaction, a paradigm for difficult optimization problems. We obtain a phase…
The extragalactic gamma-ray sky is dominated by the emission arising from blazars, one of the most peculiar classes of radio-loud active galaxies. Since the launch of Fermi several methods were developed to search for blazars as potential…