Basic properties of Fermi blazars and the "blazar sequence"

TL;DR

This study statistically compares Fermi-detected blazars with non-Fermi ones, revealing differences in properties like jet power and black hole mass, supporting the blazar sequence and highlighting the role of beaming effects.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive statistical analysis of Fermi and non-Fermi blazars, elucidating the main factors influencing their properties and supporting the blazar sequence model.

Findings

Fermi blazars have larger jet power and beaming ratios.

Differences in black hole mass and redshift support beaming effects as key.

Synchrotron peak frequency correlates with accretion rate, not black hole mass.

Abstract

By statistically analyzing a large sample which includes blazars of Fermi detection (FBs) and non-Fermi detection (NFBs), we find that there are significant differences between FBs and NFBs for redshift, black hole mass, jet kinetic power from "cavity" power, broad-line luminosity, and ratio of core luminosity to absolute V-band magnitude ($R_{\rm v}$), but not for ratio of radio core to extended flux ($R_{\rm c}$) and Eddington ratio. Compared with NFBs, FBs have larger mean jet power, $R_{\rm c}$ and $R_{\rm v}$ while smaller mean redshift, black hole mass, broad-line luminosity. These results support that the beaming effect is main reason for differences between FBs and NFBs, and that FBs are likely to have a more powerful jet. For both Fermi and non-Fermi blazars, there are significant correlations between jet power and the accretion rate (traced by the broad-emission-lines luminosity), between jet power and black hole mass; for Fermi blazars, the black hole mass does not have significant influence on jet power while for non-Fermi blazars, both accretion rate and black hole mass have contributions to the jet power. Our results support the "blazar sequence" and show that synchrotron peak frequency ($\nu_{\rm peak}$) is associated with accretion rate but not with black hole mass.