Related papers: Understanding Blazar Jets Through Their Multifrequ…
We have recently proposed a new scenario where blazars are classified as flat-spectrum radio quasars or BL Lacs according to the prescriptions of unified schemes, and to a varying combination of Doppler boosted radiation from the jet,…
We compare the rise and decay timescales of $\sim$200 long-term ($\sim$weeks-months) GeV and R-band outbursts and $\sim$25 short-term ($\sim$hr-day) GeV flares in a sample of 10 blazars using light curves from the Fermi-LAT and the…
Blazar flare data show energy-dependent lags and correlated variability between optical/X-ray and GeV-TeV energies, and follow characteristic trajectories when plotted in the spectral-index/flux plane. This behavior is qualitatively…
Although blazar variability is probably dominated by emission from relativistic jets, accretion disks should be present in all blazars. These disks produce emission over most of the electromagnetic spectrum; various unstable processes…
The EGRET instrument on the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (1991-2000) has positively detected high energy gamma-ray emission from more than 67 active galaxies of the blazar class. The majority of the EGRET blazars are flat-spectrum radio…
Blazars radiate from relativistic jets launched by a supermassive black hole along our line of sight; the subclass of FSRQs exhibits broad emission lines, a telltale sign of a gas-rich environment and high accretion rate, contrary to the…
The optical radiation emitted by blazars contains contributions from synchrotron radiation by relativistic electrons in the jets, as well as thermal radiation emitted mainly by the Accretion Disk (AD), the Broad Line Region (BLR) and the…
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…
Blazars are a sub-class of quasars with Doppler boosted jets oriented close to the line of sight, and thus efficient probes of supermassive black hole growth and their environment, especially at high redshifts. Here we report on Very Long…
Multi-Messenger observations and theory of astrophysical objects is fast becoming a critical research area in the astrophysics scientific community. In particular, point-like objects like that of BL Lac, flat spectrum radio quasars (FSRQ),…
Models of Blazars based on the propagation of finite discontinuities or fronts in the Poynting flux jet from the innermost regions of an accretion disk around a black hole are discussed. Such fronts may be responsible for short time-scale…
The Fermi, Swift and INTEGRAL satellites, together with ground based (especially Cherenkov) telescopes made possible a great progress in our understanding of relativistic jets. We can now start to attack the difficult questions of jet…
Blazars, a highly energetic subclass of jetted active galactic nuclei, show a broad band spectral energy distribution (SED) with two bumps, resulting from non-thermal jet emission. In 1998, an anticorrelation between the SED luminosity and…
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…
Our recent progress on time-dependent modeling of the multiwavelength spectra and variability of blazars with leptonic and hadronic jet models is reviewed. Special emphasis is placed on X-ray spectral variability of low-frequency peaked…
Recent observations of blazars at high energy (HE, 0.1-100 GeV) and very high energy (VHE, >0.1 TeV) have provided important constraints on the intensity and spectrum of the diffuse Extragalactic Background Light (EBL), shedding light on…
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…
We reviewed X-ray flux and spectral variability properties studied to date by various X-ray satellites for Mrk 421 and PKS 2155-304, which are TeV emitting blazars. Mrk 421 and PKS 2155-304 are the most X-ray luminous blazars in the…
We use statistical results from a large sample of about 500 blazars, based on two surveys, the Deep X-ray Radio Blazar Survey (DXRBS), nearly complete, and the RASS-Green Bank survey (RGB), to provide new constraints on the spectral energy…
Active galactic nuclei (AGN) with relativistic jets are the most powerful persistent astrophysical sources of electromagnetic radiation in the Universe. Blazars are the most extreme subclass of AGN with jets directed along the line of sight…