On the Evolution of Seyfert galaxies, BL Lacertae objects and Flat-spectrum radio quasars

TL;DR

This study analyzes the properties of Seyfert galaxies and blazars to investigate their potential evolutionary connection, providing statistical evidence that supports a unified evolutionary sequence among these active galactic nuclei subclasses.

Contribution

It offers a comprehensive comparison of spectral properties across multiple wavelengths for a large sample, supporting the evolutionary link between Seyfert galaxies and blazar subclasses.

Findings

Similar ratios of differences suggest evolutionary relationship.

Spectral indices support a common parent population.

Results align with the hypothesis of AGN unification through evolution.

Abstract

The concept of the evolutionary sequence of jetted active galactic nuclei (AGNs) has been challenged in the last few decades since AGN subclasses are considered to be different due to their viewing angle. In this paper, we collected a sample of 1108 blazars (472 flat-spectrum radio quasars, FSRQs and 636 BL Lacertae objects, BL Lacs) and 120 Seyfert galaxies (SGs) with available redshifts and spectral properties in radio, optical, X-ray, and gamma-ray bands in order to compare the properties of SGs and the blazar subclasses and also explore their possible unification through evolution. It is found that the ratio of the relative difference of SGs and the blazar subclasses are approximately the same implying that they have an evolutionary relationship. We discovered from the results of a two-dimensional Kolmogorov-Smirnov (K.S.) test, that the probabilities (p) for the composite spectral indices: optical-X-ray radio-X-ray radio-optical and X-ray-gamma-ray to come from the same parent population is p, less than 0.05, implying that the null hypothesis cannot be rejected, thus, supports SGs-BL Lacs-FSRQs evolutionary sequence................. These results agree with the prediction that SGs have an evolutionary relationship with the blazar subclasses.