No Arabic abstract
We present the redshift evolutions and distributions of the gamma-ray luminosity and photon spectral index of flat spectrum radio quasar (FSRQ) type blazars, using non-parametric methods to obtain the evolutions and distributions directly from the data. The sample we use for analysis consists of almost all FSRQs observed with a greater than approximately 7 sigma detection threshold in the first year catalog of the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescopes Large Area Telescope, with redshfits as determined from optical spectroscopy by Shaw et al. We find that FSQRs undergo rapid gamma-ray luminosity evolution, but negligible photon index evolution, with redshift. With these evolutions accounted for we determine the density evolution and luminosity function of FSRQs, and calculate their total contribution to the extragalactic gamma-ray background radiation, resolved and unresolved, which is found to be 16(+10/-4)%, in agreement with previous studies.
The Fermi gamma-ray satellite has recently detected gamma-ray emissions from radio galaxy cores. From these samples, we first examine the correlation between the luminosities at 5 GHz, L_{5GHz}, and at 0.1-10 GeV, L_{gamma}, of these gamma-ray loud radio galaxies. We find that the correlation is significant with L_{gamma} propto L_{5GHz}^{1.16} based on a partial correlation analysis. Using this correlation and the radio luminosity function (RLF) of radio galaxies, we further explore the contribution of gamma-ray loud radio galaxies to the unresolved extragalactic gamma-ray background (EGRB). The gamma-ray luminosity function is obtained by normalizing the RLF to reproduce the source count distribution of the Fermi gamma-ray loud radio galaxies. We find that gamma-ray loud radio galaxies will explain ~25% of the unresolved Fermi EGRB flux above 100 MeV and will also make a significant contribution to the EGRB in the 1-30 MeV energy band. Since blazars explain 22% of the EGRB above 100 MeV, radio loud active galactic nuclei (AGNs) population explains ~47% of the unresolved EGRB. We further make an interpretation on the origin of the EGRB. The observed EGRB spectrum at 0.2-100 GeV does not show an absorption signature by the extragalactic background light. Thus, the dominant population of the origin of EGRB at very high energy (>30 GeV) might be nearby gamma-ray emitting sources or sources with very hard gamma-ray spectrum.
We present average R-band optopolarimetric data, as well as variability parameters, from the first and second RoboPol observing season. We investigate whether gamma- ray--loud and gamma-ray--quiet blazars exhibit systematic differences in their optical polarization properties. We find that gamma-ray--loud blazars have a systematically higher polarization fraction (0.092) than gamma-ray--quiet blazars (0.031), with the hypothesis of the two samples being drawn from the same distribution of polarization fractions being rejected at the 3{sigma} level. We have not found any evidence that this discrepancy is related to differences in the redshift distribution, rest-frame R-band lu- minosity density, or the source classification. The median polarization fraction versus synchrotron-peak-frequency plot shows an envelope implying that high synchrotron- peaked sources have a smaller range of median polarization fractions concentrated around lower values. Our gamma-ray--quiet sources show similar median polarization fractions although they are all low synchrotron-peaked. We also find that the random- ness of the polarization angle depends on the synchrotron peak frequency. For high synchrotron-peaked sources it tends to concentrate around preferred directions while for low synchrotron-peaked sources it is more variable and less likely to have a pre- ferred direction. We propose a scenario which mediates efficient particle acceleration in shocks and increases the helical B-field component immediately downstream of the shock.
We present a determination of the distributions of gamma-ray photon flux -- the so called LogN-LogS relation -- and photon spectral index for blazars, based on the third extragalactic source catalog of the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescopes Large Area Telescope, and considering the photon energy range from 100 MeV to 100 GeV. The dataset consists of the 774 blazars in the so-called Clean sample detected with a greater than approximately seven sigma detection threshold and located above $pm$20 deg Galactic latitude. We use non-parametric methods verified in previous works to reconstruct the intrinsic distributions from the observed ones which account for the data truncations introduced by observational bias and includes the effects of the possible correlation between the flux and photon index. The intrinsic flux distribution can be represented by a broken power law with a high flux power-law index of -2.43$pm$0.08 and a low flux power-law index of -1.87$pm$0.10. The intrinsic photon index distribution can be represented by a Gaussian with mean of 2.62$pm$0.05 and width of 0.17$pm$0.02. We also report the intrinsic distributions for the sub-populations of BL Lac and FSRQ type blazars separately and these differ substantially. We then estimate the contribution of FSRQs and BL Lacs to the diffuse extragalactic gamma-ray background radiation. Under the simplistic assumption that the flux distributions probed in this analysis continue to arbitrary low flux, we calculate that the best fit contribution of FSRQs is 35% and BL Lacs 17% of the total gamma-ray output of the Universe in this energy range.
Blazar spectral models generally have numerous unconstrained parameters, leading to ambiguous values for physical properties like Doppler factor delta or fluid magnetic field B. To help remedy this problem, a few modifications of the standard leptonic blazar jet scenario are considered. First, a log-parabola function for the electron distribution is used. Second, analytic expressions relating energy loss and kinematics to blazar luminosity and variability, written in terms of equipartition parameters, imply delta, B, and the principal electron Lorentz factor gamma_pk. The external radiation field in a blazar is approximated by Ly alpha radiation from the broad line region (BLR) and ~0.1 eV infrared radiation from a dusty torus. When used to model 3C 279 SEDs from 2008 and 2009 reported by Hayashida et al. (2012), we derive delta ~ 20-30, B ~ few G, and total (IR + BLR) external radiation field energy densities u ~ 0.01 - 0.001 erg/cm^3, implying an origin of the gamma-ray emission site in 3C 279 at the outer edges of the BLR. This is consistent with the gamma-ray emission site being located at a distance R <~ Gamma^2 c t_{var} ~ 0.1 (Gamma/30)^2 (t_{var}/10^4 s) pc from the black hole powering 3C 279s jets, where t_{var} is the variability time scale of the radiation in the source frame, and at farther distances for narrow-jet and magnetic_reconnection models. Excess >~ 5 GeV gamma-ray emission observed with Fermi LAT from 3C 279 challenge the model, opening the possibility of hadronic origins of the emission. For low hadronic content, absolute jet powers of ~10% of the Eddington luminosity are calculated.
Since its launch in April 2007, the AGILE satellite detected with its Gamma-Ray Imaging Detector (GRID) several blazars at high significance: 3C 279, 3C 454.3, PKS 1510-089, S5 0716+714, 3C 273, W Comae, Mrk 421 and PKS 0537-441. Moreover, AGILE was able both to rapidly respond to sudden changes in blazar activity state at other wavelengths and to alert other telescopes quickly in response to changes in the gamma-ray fluxes. Thus, we were able to obtain multiwavelength data from other observatories such as Spitzer, Swift, RXTE, Suzaku, INTEGRAL, MAGIC, VERITAS, as well as radio-to-optical coverage by means of the GASP Project of the WEBT and REM. This large multifrequency coverage gave us the opportunity to study the Spectral Energy Distribution of these sources from radio to gamma-rays energy bands and to investigate the different mechanisms responsible for their emission. We present an overview of the AGILE results on these gamma-ray blazars and the relative multifrequency data.