The Broad Band Spectral Energy Distributions of SDSS Blazars

TL;DR

This study compiles multi-wavelength data of SDSS blazars to analyze their luminosity distributions and spectral properties, revealing differences among subclasses and suggesting a unified physical framework.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of blazar spectral energy distributions and luminosities, highlighting subclass differences and potential unified physical mechanisms.

Findings

FSRQ luminosity exceeds BL Lacs luminosity

HBLs have distinct spectral properties

Similar physical processes may operate across blazar subclasses

Abstract

We compiled the radio, optical, and X-ray data of blazars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) database, and presented the distribution of luminosities and broad band spectral indices. The distribution of luminosities shows that the averaged luminosity of flat-spectral radio quasars (FSRQs) is larger than that of BL Lacs objects. On the other hand, the broad band spectral energy distribution reveals that FSRQs and low energy peaked BL Lac objects (LBLs) objects have similar spectral properties, but high energy peaked BL Lac objects (HBLs) have a distinct spectral property. This may be due to that different subclasses of blazars have different intrinsic environments and are at different cooling levels. Even so, a unified scheme also is revealed from the color-color diagram, which hints that there are similar physical processes operating in all objects under a range of intrinsic physical conditions or beaming parameter.