Related papers: Blazars: recent developments
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…
We present an overview of the current theoretical models attempting to describe the structure and radiative processes operating in blazars and discuss the observational constraints that these models must confront.
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 propose and test a fairly simple idea that could account for the blazar sequence: all jets are launched with similar energy per baryon, independently of their power. For instance, flat-spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs), the most powerful…
Emission from astronomical jets extend over the entire spectral band: from radio to the TeV gamma-rays. This implies that various radiative processes are taking place in different regions along jets. Understanding the origin of the emission…
Time-variable polarization is an extremely valuable observational tool to probe the dynamical physical conditions of blazar jets. Since 2008, we have been monitoring the flux and linear polarization of a sample of gamma-ray bright blazars…
For a sample of 51 blazars with extensive optical polarization data, we used circular statistics to calculate the scatter among the polarization position angles for each object. We found that this scatter is correlated with the radio core…
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…
Blazars are a class of active galactic nuclei which host relativistic jets oriented close to the observer's line of sight. Blazars have very complex variability properties. Flares, namely flux variations around the mean value with a…
We review the history of jets in high energy physics, and describe in more detail the developments of the past ten years, discussing new algorithms for jet finding and their main characteristics, and summarising the status of perturbative…
Despite significant progress in both data taking and the development of theory, blazars keep offering surprises. While many frequency bands are now covered by long-term monitoring efforts on at least a few selected sources, blazars remain…
Relativistic jets carry energy and particles from compact to very large scales compared with their initial radius. This is possible due to their remarkable collimation despite their intrinsic unstable nature. In this contribution, I review…
We discuss some phenomenological aspects of $\gamma$-ray emitting jets. In particular, we present calculations of the $\gamma$-sphere and $\pi$-sphere for various target photon fields, and employ them to demonstrate how $\gamma$-ray…
We present new Chandra and HST data for four gamma-ray blazars selected on the basis of radio morphology with the aim of revealing X-ray and optical emission from their jets at large scales. All the sources have been detected. Spectral…
The morphologies of detected jets in X-ray binaries are almost as diverse as their number. This is due to different jet properties and ambient media that these jets encounter. It is important to understand the physics of these objects and…
In this review, recent progress in theoretical models for blazar emission will be summarized. The salient features of both leptonic and lepto-hadronic approaches to modeling blazar spectral energy distributions will be reviewed. I will…
Blazars show variability on timescales ranging from minutes to years, the former being comparable to and in some cases even shorter than the light-crossing time of the central black hole. The observed gamma-ray lightcurves can be described…
The recent launch of Fermi / GLAST - coinciding with the MAXI workshop - opens a new era for studies of jet-dominated active galaxies, known as blazars. While the emission processes operating in various spectral bands in blazars are…
Constraints on the dynamics, dissipation, and production of VHE neutrinos in relativistic jets are derived using opacity calculations and VHE $\gamma$-ray observations. In particular, it is demonstrated how rapid variability of the…
We will present a summary of the observations of blazars by the Energetic Gamma Ray Experiment Telescope (EGRET) on the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (CGRO). EGRET has detected high energy gamma-ray emission at energies greater than 100 MeV…