On estimators of the jet bolometric luminosity of Fermi 2LAC blazars

TL;DR

This study evaluates six estimators for blazar bolometric luminosity, finding all are significantly correlated, with gamma-ray luminosity being the most reliable predictor, and provides calibration equations for practical use.

Contribution

The paper systematically assesses the reliability of six different estimators of blazar bolometric luminosity and offers calibration equations, highlighting gamma-ray luminosity as the most effective estimator.

Findings

All six estimators are significantly correlated with bolometric luminosity.

Gamma-ray luminosity is the most reliable estimator among those tested.

Calibration equations are provided for each estimator.

Abstract

Bolometric luminosity is a basic physical parameter that is widely used in the study of blazars. Due to the lack of simultaneous full wavelength data, several estimators of the bolometric luminosity are being used in practice. In this paper, we study and evaluate the reliability and significance of six estimators, the $5GHz$ luminosity, the 1keV luminosity, the $\gamma$-ray luminosity, the $5GHz$ luminosity+the 1keV luminosity, the $5GHz$ luminosity+the $\gamma$-ray luminosity and the 1keV luminosity+the $\gamma$-ray luminosity, by analyzing the linear correlations between the integrated bolometric luminosity and them. Our main results are as follows. (i) All the six estimators are reliable in the sense that they are all significant correlated with the bolometric luminosity. (ii) Ranking from the higher significance of the reliability to lower one the six estimators are the the $5GHz$ luminosity+the $\gamma$-ray luminosity, the 1keV luminosity+the $\gamma$-ray luminosity, $\gamma$-ray luminosity, the $5GHz$ luminosity+the 1keV luminosity, the $5GHz$ luminosity and the 1keV luminosity. (iii) We suggest that the bolometric luminosity can be well estimated by the $\gamma$-ray luminosity using the best linear equation that given in this paper for Fermi FSRQs. (iv) According to the linear regressions obtained in the analysis, we provide calibration for each estimator.