The radio dichotomy of active galactic nuclei

TL;DR

This paper investigates the longstanding radio dichotomy in active galactic nuclei (AGNs), proposing a combined radio luminosity and loudness criterion for classification and exploring the origin of radio emissions.

Contribution

It introduces a double-criterion method using radio luminosity and loudness to classify AGNs, and suggests a shared origin of radio emissions in both radio-loud and radio-quiet AGNs.

Findings

Identifies a clear separation at log R = 1.37 between RL and RQ AGNs.

Proposes a new dividing line using a machine learning approach.

Suggests radio emissions in RL and RQ AGNs share the same origin.

Abstract

The question of radio dichotomy in the active galactic nuclei (AGNs) is still in debate even it has been proposed for more than forty years. In order to solve the old riddle, we collect a sample of AGNs with optical $B$ band and radio 6cm wavelength data to analyze the radio loudness ${\rm log}R$. Our results indicate a separation of ${\rm log}R = \langle 1.37 \pm 0.02 \rangle$ between radio-loud (RL) AGNs and radio-quiet (RQ) AGNs, suggest the existence of an RL/RQ dichotomy. For the first time, we suggest combining radio luminosity and radio loudness as a double-criterion to divide AGNs into RLs and RQs to avoid misclassification problems that may happen in the single-criterion scenario, we propose the double-criterion dividing line ${\rm log}L_{\rm 6cm} = -2.7{\rm log}R +44.3$ by using a machine learning method. In addition, the key point of the RL/RQ dichotomy is the origin of radio emission for the two classes, we suggest the radio emission from RLs and RQs share the same origin, e.g. jets and mini-jets (aborted-jet or outflow), through a correlation study between radio 6cm luminosity and optical $B$ band luminosity.