MOJAVE. XVII. Jet Kinematics and Parent Population Properties of Relativistically Beamed Radio-loud Blazars
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Volume Title
A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
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Date
2019-03-20
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Mcode
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Language
en
Pages
19
Series
Astrophysical Journal, Volume 874, issue 1
Abstract
We present results from a parsec-scale jet kinematics study of 409 bright radio-loud active galactic nuclei (AGNs) based on 15 GHz Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) data obtained between 1994 August 31 and 2016 December 26 as part of the 2 cm VLBA survey and Monitoring Of Jets in Active galactic nuclei with VLBA Experiments (MOJAVE) programs. We tracked 1744 individual bright features in 382 jets over at least 5 epochs. A majority (59%) of the best-sampled jet features showed evidence of accelerated motion at the >3σ level. Although most features within a jet typically have speeds within ∼40% of a characteristic median value, we identified 55 features in 42 jets that had unusually slow pattern speeds, nearly all of which lie within 4 pc (100 pc deprojected) of the core feature. Our results, combined with other speeds from the literature, indicate a strong correlation between apparent jet speed and synchrotron peak frequency, with the highest jet speeds being found only in low-peaked AGNs. Using Monte Carlo simulations, we find best-fit parent population parameters for a complete sample of 174 quasars above 1.5 Jy at 15 GHz. Acceptable fits are found with a jet population that has a simple unbeamed power-law luminosity function incorporating pure luminosity evolution and a power-law Lorentz factor distribution ranging from 1.25 to 50 with slope -1.4 ± 0.2. The parent jets of the brightest radio quasars have a space density of 261 ± 19 Gpc -3 and unbeamed 15 GHz luminosities above ∼10 24.5 W Hz -1 , consistent with FR II class radio galaxies.Description
Keywords
BL Lacertae objects: general, galaxies: active, galaxies: jets, galaxies: Seyfert, quasars: general, radio continuum: galaxies, ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI, OPTICAL SPECTROSCOPY, COSMIC EVOLUTION, RAY, QUASARS, COMPACT, SAMPLE, REDSHIFT, SPECTRUM, AGN
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Citation
Lister, M L, Homan, D C, Hovatta, T, Kellermann, K, Kiehlmann, S, Kovalev, Y Y, Max-Moerbeck, W, Pushkarev, A B, Readhead, A C S, Ros, E & Savolainen, T 2019, ' MOJAVE. XVII. Jet Kinematics and Parent Population Properties of Relativistically Beamed Radio-loud Blazars ', The Astrophysical Journal, vol. 874, no. 1, 43 . https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ab08ee
