Unveiling the parent population of beamed narrow-line Seyfert 1s

TL;DR

This paper investigates the potential parent population of beamed narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies by analyzing their physical properties, jet interactions, and radio luminosity functions to identify unifying characteristics and origins.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive multi-sample analysis to identify the unobserved parent population of beamed NLS1s, combining spectral, jet, and luminosity data.

Findings

Black hole masses and Eddington ratios were derived for different samples.

Jet interactions with the narrow-line region were characterized.

Radio luminosity functions helped compare jet properties across samples.

Abstract

Narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies (NLS1s) are active galactic nuclei (AGN) recently identified as a new class of $\gamma$-ray sources. The high energy emission is explained by the presence of a relativistic jet observed at small angles, just like in the case of blazars. When the latter are observed at larger angles they appear as radio-galaxies, but an analogue parent population for beamed NLS1s has not yet been determined. In this work we analyze this problem by studying the physical properties of three different samples of parent sources candidates: steep-spectrum radio-loud NLS1s, radio-quiet NLS1s, and disk-hosted radio-galaxies, along with compact steep-spectrum sources. In our approach, we first derived black hole mass and Eddington ratio from the optical spectra, then we investigated the interaction between the jet and the narrow-line region from the [O III] $\lambda\lambda$4959,5007 lines. Finally, the radio luminosity function allowed us to compare their jet luminosity and hence determine the relations between the samples.