Looking for the least luminous BL Lac objects

TL;DR

This study introduces a new mid-infrared based method to identify low-power BL Lac objects, revealing a scarcity of such objects at the lowest luminosities and suggesting a minimum power threshold for jet formation.

Contribution

The paper proposes a novel selection technique combining WISE mid-infrared data with optical indices to identify low-power BL Lac objects, and analyzes their luminosity function.

Findings

Identified 36 low-power BL Lac candidates up to redshift 0.15.

Found a break in the BL Lac luminosity function at log L_r~40.6 erg/s.

Detected a minimum power threshold for jet launching in BL Lacs.

Abstract

Among active galactic nuclei, BL Lac objects show extreme properties that have been interpreted as the effect of relativistic beaming on the emission from a plasma jet oriented close to the line of sight. The Doppler amplification of the jet emission makes them ideal targets for studying jet physics. In particular, low-power BL Lacs (LPBL) are very interesting because they probe the jet formation and emission processes at the lowest levels of accretion. However, they are difficult to identify since their emission is swamped by the radiation from the host galaxy in most observing bands. In this paper we propose a new LPBL selection method based on the mid-infrared emission, in addition to the traditional optical indices. We considered the radio-selected sample of Best & Heckman (2012, MNRAS, 421, 1569) and cross-matched it with the WISE all-sky survey. In a new diagnostic plane including the W2-W3 color and the Dn(4000) index, LPBL are located in a region scarcely populated by other sources. By filtering objects with small emission line equivalent width, we isolated 36 LPBL candidates up to redshift 0.15. Their radio luminosity at 1.4 GHz spans the range log L_r = 39.2-41.5 [erg/s]. Considering the completeness of our sample, we analyzed the BL Lac luminosity function (RLF), finding a dramatic paucity of LPBL with respect to the extrapolation of the RLF toward low power. This requires a break in the RLF located at log L_r~40.6 [erg/s]. The consequent peak in the BL Lacs number density is possibly the manifestation of a minimum power required to launch a relativistic jet.