The Study of Jet Formation Mechanism in Fermi Blazars

TL;DR

This study analyzes a large sample of Fermi blazars to investigate jet formation mechanisms, revealing different dominant processes and accretion disk types in FSRQs and BL Lacs.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive comparison of jet power estimates and supports the idea that BZ and BP mechanisms dominate in BL Lacs and FSRQs respectively.

Findings

Jet power in FSRQs can be explained by the BP mechanism.

Jet power in BL Lacs can be explained by the BZ mechanism.

FSRQs have higher accretion rates and standard disks, while BL Lacs have advection-dominated disks.

Abstract

The origin of jet launching mainly comes from two mechanisms: the BZ mechanism and the BP mechanism. However, it is in debate which one is dominating in blazars. In this work, we used a sample of 937 Fermi blazars to study the jet formation mechanism. We studied the correlation between the jet power and the accretion rate, as well as the comparison between jet power estimated by spectral energy distribution (SED) fitting and that estimated by theoretical formula and radio flux density. Our results suggest that there is no correlation between jet power estimated by SED fitting and the accretion rate for BL Lacs, while a positive and weak correlation exists for flat spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs). Meanwhile, to confirm whether the BP and BZ mechanism is sufficient to launch the jet for FSRQs and BL Lacs, we compare the theoretical jet power with that estimated by SED fitting, as well as that by radio emission. We found that the jet power for most of the two subclasses estimated by SED fitting cannot be explained by either the BP or BZ mechanism. While the jet power for most FSRQs estimated by radio flux density can be explained by the BP mechanism, and most BL Lacs can be explained by the BZ mechanism. We also found that FSRQs have higher accretion rates than BL Lacs, implying different accretion disks around their central black holes: FSRQs typically have standard disks, while BL Lacs usually have advection-dominated accretion flow disks.