Related papers: BL Lac Objects and Blazars: Past, Present, and Fut…
Blazars are characterized by rapid variability at virtually all wavelengths from radio through TeV gamma-rays. The challenge since their discovery has been to understand the origin of their luminous, apparently nonthermal, nuclear emission.…
The appearance of active galactic nuclei (AGN) depends so strongly on orientation that our current classification schemes are dominated by random pointing directions instead of more interesting physical properties. Light from the centers of…
Relativistic jets of active galactic nuclei have been known to exist for 100 years. Blazars with their jet pointing close to our line of sight are some of the most variable and extreme objects in the universe, showing emission from radio to…
The extragalactic $\gamma$-ray sky is dominated by blazars and their study plays an important role in understanding jet physics, cosmic evolution history and origin of ultra high energy cosmic rays. In this work, we study a large sample of…
Recent VLBI studies of the morphology and kinematics of individual BL Lac objects (S5 1803+784, PKS 0735+178, etc.) have revealed a new paradigm for the pc-scale jet kinematics of these sources. Unlike the apparent superluminal outward…
The phenomenology of gamma-ray bright blazars can be accounted for by a sequence in the source power and intensity of the diffuse radiation field surrounding the relativistic jet. Correspondingly, the equilibrium particle distribution peaks…
Blazars represent the most abundant class of high-energy extragalactic $\gamma$-ray sources. The subset of blazars known as BL Lac objects is on average closer to Earth and characterized by harder spectra at high energy than the whole…
We present first-epoch, milliarcsecond-scale linear polarization images at 15 GHz of 133 jets associated with AGN in the MOJAVE survey (Monitoring of Jets in Active Galactic Nuclei with VLBA Experiments). The sample consists of all known…
The LAT instrument, onboard the Fermi satellite, in its first three months of operation detected more than 100 blazars at more than the 10 sigma level. This is already a great improvement with respect to its predecessor, the instrument…
We explore the viability of the unification of BL Lacs and FR I radio galaxies by comparing the core emission of radio galaxies with those of BL Lacs, taking advantage of the newly measured optical nuclear luminosity of FR I sources. The…
The radio properties of blazars detected by the Large Area Telescope (LAT) on board the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have been observed as part of the VLBA Imaging and Polarimetry Survey (VIPS). This large, flux-limited sample of active…
In this paper we investigate the properties of a sample of six BL Lacs by fitting their spectra using our inhomogeneous jet model with an accelerating, magnetically dominated, parabolic base, which transitions to a slowly decelerating…
We propose a unified classification for BL Lac objects (BLs), focusing on the synchrotron peak frequency of the spectral energy distribution. The unification scheme is based on the angle Theta that describes the orientation of 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…
Radio galaxies (RGs) are a subclass of active galactic nuclei, which are suggested to be the parent populations of blazars. According to the accretion-ejection paragram, RGs can be classified into low-excitation or high-excitation radio…
With their rapid, violent variability and broad featureless continuum emission, blazars have puzzled astronomers for over two decades. Today blazars represent the only extragalactic objects detected in high-energy gamma-rays. Their spectral…
BL Lac objects are an extreme type of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) that belong to the largest population of $\gamma$-ray sources: blazars. This class of AGNs shows a double-bumped spectral energy distribution that is commonly described in…
Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) are now known to be strong gamma-ray emitters. After briefly describing the different classes of AGN and the basic tenets of unified schemes, I discuss the role of blazars (that is BL Lacs and flat-spectrum…
Recent observational and theoretical results on blazars are presented and discussed. We are beginning to understand the rich phenomenology of blazars, and we are finding trends which will hopefully lead us to unveil the physics of these…
Our understanding of the unification of jetted AGN has evolved greatly as jet samples have increased in size. Here, based on the largest-ever sample of over 2000 well-sampled jet spectral energy distributions, we examine the synchrotron…