Published November 2014 | Version v1
Journal article

CONSTRAINTS ON THE MINIMUM ELECTRON LORENTZ FACTOR AND MATTER CONTENT OF JETS FOR A SAMPLE OF BRIGHT FERMI BLAZARS

  • 1. School of Physics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074 (China)
  • 2. Key Laboratory for Research in Galaxies and Cosmology, Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 80 Nandan Road, Shanghai 200030 (China)

Description

We fit (quasi-)simultaneous multi-waveband spectral energy distributions for a sample of low-synchrotron-peaked (LSP) blazars with a one-zone leptonic model. The seed photons that predominantly come from the broad line region (BLR) and infrared (IR) molecular torus are considered in the context of an external Compton process. We find that modeling with IR seed photons is systematically better than that with BLR photons based on a χ2 test, which suggests that γ-ray-emitting regions are most likely found outside the BLR. The minimum electron Lorentz factor, γmin, is constrained from the modeling of these LSP blazars with good soft X-ray data (ranging from 5 to 160 with a median value of 55), which plays a key role in jet power estimation. Assuming a one-to-one ratio of protons to electrons, we find that the jet power for LSP blazars is systematically higher than that of FR II radio galaxies at a 151 MHz radio luminosity, L 151 MHz even though FR IIs are regarded as the same as LSP blazars in a unification scheme except at the jet viewing angle. A possible reason for this is that there are some e ± pairs in the jets of these blazars. If this is the case, we find that the number density of e ± pairs should be several times higher than that of e -p pairs by assuming the jet power is the same for LSP blazars and FR IIs at the given L 151 MHz

Availability note (English)

Available from http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/0067-0049/215/1/5

Additional details

Identifiers

Publishing Information

Journal Title
Astrophysical Journal, Supplement Series
Journal Volume
215
Journal Issue
1
Journal Page Range
[16 p.]
ISSN
0067-0049
CODEN
APJSA2