No Arabic abstract
Before the launch of the Fermi satellite only two classes of AGNs were known to produce relativistic jets and thus emit up to the gamma-ray energy range: blazars and radio galaxies, both hosted in giant elliptical galaxies. The first four years of observations by the Large Area Telescope on board Fermi confirmed that these two are the most numerous classes of identified sources in the extragalactic gamma-ray sky, but the discovery of gamma-ray emission from 5 radio-loud narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies revealed the presence of a possible emerging third class of AGNs with relativistic jets. Considering that narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies seem to be typically hosted in spiral galaxy, this finding poses intriguing questions about the nature of these objects, the onset of production of relativistic jets, and the cosmological evolution of radio-loud AGN. Here, we discuss the radio-to-gamma-rays properties of the gamma-ray emitting narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies, also in comparison with the blazar scenario.
The discovery of gamma-ray emission from 5 radio-loud narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies revealed the presence of a possible emerging third class of AGNs with relativistic jets, in addition to blazars and radio galaxies. The existence of relativistic jets also in this subclass of Seyfert galaxies opened an unexplored research space for our knowledge of the radio-loud AGNs. Here, we discuss the radio-to-gamma-rays properties of the gamma-ray emitting narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies, also in comparison with the blazar scenario.
Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 (NLS1) class of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) is generally radio-quiet, but a small percent of them are radio-loud. The recent discovery by Fermi/LAT of high-energy gamma-ray emission from 4 NLS1s proved the existence of relativistic jets in these systems. It is therefore important to study this new class of gamma-ray emitting AGNs. Here we report preliminary results about the observations of the July 2010 gamma-ray outburst of PMN J0948+0022, when the source flux exceeded for the first time 10^-6 ph cm^-2 s^-1 (E > 100 MeV).
Before the launch of the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope satellite only two classes of active galactic nuclei (AGN) were known to generate relativistic jets and thus to emit up to the $gamma$-ray energy range: blazars and radio galaxies, both hosted in giant elliptical galaxies. The discovery by the Large Area Telescope (LAT) on-board the Fermi satellite of variable $gamma$-ray emission from a few radio-loud narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies (NLSy1) revealed the presence of an emerging third class of AGN with powerful relativistic jets. Considering that NLSy1 are usually hosted in late-type galaxies with relatively small black hole masses, this finding opened new challenging questions about the nature of these objects, the disc/jet connection, the emission mechanisms at high energies, and the formation of relativistic jets. In this review, I will discuss the broad-band properties of the $gamma$-ray-emitting NLSy1 included in the Fourth Fermi LAT source catalog, highlighting major findings and open questions regarding jet physics, black hole mass estimation, host galaxy and accretion process of these sources in the Fermi era.
The discovery by the Large Area Telescope on board Fermi of variable gamma-ray emission from radio-loud narrow-line Seyfert 1 (NLSy1) galaxies revealed the presence of a possible third class of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) with relativistic jets in addition to blazars and radio galaxies. Considering that NLSy1 are usually hosted in spiral galaxies, this finding poses intriguing questions about the nature of these objects and the formation of relativistic jets. We report on a systematic investigation of the gamma-ray properties of a sample of radio-loud NLSy1, including the detection of new objects, using 7 years of Fermi-LAT data with the new Pass 8 event-level analysis. In addition we discuss the radio-to-very-high-energy properties of the gamma-ray emitting NLSy1, their host galaxy, and black hole mass in the context of the blazar scenario and the unification of relativistic jets at different scales.
Before the launch of the Fermi satellite only two classes of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) were known to generate relativistic jets and thus to emit up to the gamma-ray energy range: blazars and radio galaxies, both hosted in giant elliptical galaxies. The first four years of observations by the Large Area Telescope (LAT) on board Fermi confirmed that these two populations represent the most numerous identified sources in the extragalactic gamma-ray sky, but the discovery of variable gamma-ray emission from 5 radio-loud Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 (NLSy1) galaxies revealed the presence of a possible emerging third class of AGN with relativistic jets. Considering that NLSy1 are thought to be hosted in spiral galaxies, this finding poses intriguing questions about the nature of these objects, the knowledge of the development of relativistic jets, and the evolution of radio-loud AGN. In this context, the study of the radio-loud NLSy1 from radio to gamma-rays has received increasing attention. Here we discuss the radio-to-gamma-rays properties of the gamma-ray emitting NLSy1, also in comparison with the blazar scenario.