Fermi/LAT broad emission line blazars

TL;DR

This study analyzes gamma-ray detected broad emission line blazars to explore the relationship between accretion disk properties and jet emission, using a large sample and comparing with quasars.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of 217 blazars, comparing black hole masses and disc luminosities with quasars, and applying a leptonic jet model to understand jet parameters.

Findings

Black hole mass estimates from IR-optical-UV data agree with virial methods.

Jet parameters are consistent with previous smaller sample studies.

The connection between accretion and jet emission is reinforced by the data.

Abstract

We study the broad emission line blazars detected in the gamma-ray band by the Large Area Telescope onboard the Fermi satellite and with the optical spectrum studied by Shaw et al. (2012, 2013). The observed broad line strength provides a measure of the ionizing luminosity of the accretion disk, while the gamma-luminosity is a proxy for the bolometric non-thermal beamed jet emission. The resulting sample, composed by 217 blazars, is the best suited to study the connection between accretion and jet properties. We compare the broad emission line properties of these blazars with those of radio-quiet and radio-loud quasars present in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, to asses differences and similarities of the disc luminosity and the virial black hole mass. For most sources, we could derive the black hole mass by reproducing the IR-optical-UV data with a standard accretion disc spectrum, and we compared the black hole masses derived with the two methods. The distributions of the masses estimated in the two ways agree satisfactorily. We then apply a simple, one-zone, leptonic model to all the 217 objects of our sample. The knowledge of the black hole mass and disc luminosity helps to constrain the jet parameters. On average they are similar to what found by previous studies of smaller samples of sources.