Jet opening angles and gamma-ray brightness of AGN

TL;DR

This study compares apparent and intrinsic jet opening angles of gamma-ray bright and weak AGN, revealing that gamma-ray bright AGN have larger apparent angles due to orientation effects, consistent with relativistic beaming models.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed comparison of apparent and intrinsic jet opening angles in gamma-ray detected and non-detected AGN using VLBA data.

Findings

Gamma-ray bright AGN have larger apparent opening angles.

Intrinsic opening angles are similar across both groups.

Jet orientation and relativistic beaming explain observed differences.

Abstract

We have investigated the differences in apparent opening angles between the parsec-scale jets of the active galactic nuclei (AGN) detected by the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) during its first three months of operations and those of non-LAT-detected AGN. We used 15.4 GHz VLBA observations of sources from the 2 cm VLBA MOJAVE program, a subset of which comprise the statistically complete flux density limited MOJAVE sample. We determined the apparent opening angles by analyzing transverse jet profiles from the data in the image plane and by applying a model fitting technique to the data in the (u,v) plane. Both methods provided comparable opening angle estimates. The apparent opening angles of gamma-ray bright blazars are preferentially larger than those of gamma-ray weak sources. At the same time, we have found the two groups to have similar intrinsic opening angle distributions, based on a smaller subset of sources. This suggests that the jets in gamma-ray bright AGN are oriented at preferentially smaller angles to the line of sight resulting in a stronger relativistic beaming. The intrinsic jet opening angle and bulk flow Lorentz factor are found to be inversely proportional, as predicted by standard models of compact relativistic jets. If a gas dynamical jet acceleration model is assumed, the ratio of the initial pressure of the plasma in the core region P_0 to the external pressure P_ext lies within the range 1.1 to 34.6, with a best fit estimate of P_0/P_ext=2.