BAT AGN Spectroscopic Survey. XVI. General Physical Characteristics of BAT Blazars

Paliya, Vaidehi S.; Koss, Michael; Trakhtenbrot, Benny; Ricci, Cláudio; Oh, Kyuseok; Ajello, M.; Stern, Daniel; Powell, Meredith C.; Urry, C. Megan; Harrison, Fiona A.; Lamperti, Isabella; Mushotzky, R. F.; Marcotulli, L.; Mejía-Restrepo, Julián E.; Hartmann, D. H.

doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ab2f8b

Cited by 41 publications

(53 citation statements)

References 69 publications

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“…AGN with jets aligned with our line of sight are called blazars and exhibit highly variable emission across the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Blazars are the most powerful, persistent sources of radiation in the universe (e.g., Ghisellini et al 2014;Paliya et al 2019b).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

TXS 2116−077: A Gamma-Ray Emitting Relativistic Jet Hosted in a Galaxy Merger

Paliya

Pérez

García-Benito

et al. 2020

ApJ

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What triggers collimated relativistic outflows or jets, from the centers of galaxies remains a fundamental question in astrophysics. The merging of two galaxies has been proposed to realize the conditions to successfully launch and drive such jets into the intergalactic medium. However, evidences for the operation of this mechanism are scarce. Here we report the first unambiguous detection of an ongoing merger of a narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxy, TXS 2116−077, hosting a closely aligned, γ-ray emitting relativistic jet with a Seyfert 2 galaxy at a separation of ∼12 kpc, using the observations taken with 8.2 m Subaru telescope. Our subsequent followup observations with 10.4 m Gran Telescopio Canarias, 4.2 m William Herschel Telescope, and Chandra X-ray observatory have provided what is likely to be the first glimpse of the merging environment hosting a closely aligned relativistic jet. Our finding that the jet is considerably younger than the merger demonstrates that jet activity can be triggered by galaxy mergers and that γ-ray detected narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies represent the beginning phase of that activity. These results also highlight the crucial role of mergers in shaping the fate of galaxies in their cosmological evolution and are consistent with recent studies focused on the host galaxy imaging of this enigmatic class of active galactic nuclei.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

TXS 2116−077: A Gamma-Ray Emitting Relativistic Jet Hosted in a Galaxy Merger

Paliya

Pérez

García-Benito

et al. 2020

ApJ

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“…However, since a definite value of L BLR could not be ascertained, a strong conclusion cannot be made. Indeed, if we consider the disk luminosity-BLR radius relationship (see, e.g., Tavecchio & Ghisellini 2008), a low level of accretion luminosity of BZB J0955+3551indicates a small R BLR , and, on average, the emission region would be located farther away, as also reported in various blazar population studies (see, e.g., Paliya et al 2017Paliya et al , 2019b. In the absence of a strong photon field, relativistic electrons can reach up to VHEs, leading to the observation of a high synchrotron peaked SED (see Ghisellini et al 2013).…”

Section: Stationary Photon Field In the Agn Rest Framementioning

confidence: 64%

Multifrequency Observations of the Candidate Neutrino-emitting Blazar BZB J0955+3551

Paliya

Böttcher

Olmo-García

et al. 2020

ApJ

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The recent spatial and temporal coincidence of the blazar TXS 0506+056 with the IceCube-detected neutrino event IC-170922A has opened up a realm of multimessenger astronomy with blazar jets as a plausible site of cosmic-ray acceleration. After TXS 0506+056, a second blazar, BZB J0955+3551, was recently found to be spatially coincident with the IceCube-detected neutrino event IC-200107A and undergoing its brightest X-ray flare measured so far. Here we present the results of our multifrequency campaign to study this peculiar event that includes observations with the NuSTAR, Swift, Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), and 10.4 m Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC). The optical spectroscopic observation from GTC secured its redshift as = -+ z 0.55703 0.00021 0.00033 and the central black hole mass as  10 8.90 0.16  M . Both NuSTARand NICERdata reveal a rapid flux variability, albeit at low significance ( s 3.5 ). We explore the origin of the target photon field needed for the photopion production using analytical calculations and considering the observed optical-to-X-ray flux level. We conclude that seed photons may originate from outside the jet, similar to that reported for TXS 0506+056, although a scenario invoking a comoving target photon field (e.g., electron synchrotron) cannot be ruled out. The electromagnetic output from the neutrino-producing photohadronic processes are likely to make only a subdominant contribution to the observed spectral energy distribution, suggesting that the X-ray flaring event may not be directly connected with IC-200107A.

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“…Our analysis focuses on these obscured sources, which show features of Thomson-scattered radiation in their X-ray spectra. Of these, nine sources are flagged as blazars by Ricci et al(2017a; see also Paliya et al 2019). However, they are included in the analysis as their X-ray spectra showed signatures of reprocessed X-ray emission (Ricci et al 2017a).…”

Section: Sample and Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

BAT AGN Spectroscopic Survey XXVII: scattered X-Ray radiation in obscured active galactic nuclei

Gupta

Ricci

Tortosa

et al. 2021

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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Accreting supermassive black holes (SMBHs), also known as active galactic nuclei (AGN), are generally surrounded by large amounts of gas and dust. This surrounding material reprocesses the primary X-ray emission produced close to the SMBH and gives rise to several components in the broadband X-ray spectra of AGN, including a power-law possibly associated with Thomson-scattered radiation. In this work, we study the properties of this scattered component for a sample of 386 hard-X-ray-selected, nearby (z ∼ 0.03) obscured AGN from the 70-month Swift/BAT catalog. We investigate how the fraction of Thomson-scattered radiation correlates with different physical properties of AGN, such as line-of-sight column density, X-ray luminosity, black hole mass, and Eddington ratio. We find a significant negative correlation between the scattering fraction and the column density. Based on a large number of spectral simulations, we exclude the possibility that this anti-correlation is due to degeneracies between the parameters. The negative correlation also persists when considering different ranges of luminosity, black hole mass, and Eddington ratio. We discuss how this correlation might be either due to the angle dependence of the Thomson cross-section or to more obscured sources having a higher covering factor of the torus. We also find a positive correlation between the scattering fraction and the ratio of [O iii] λ5007 to X-ray luminosity. This result is consistent with previous studies and suggests that the Thomson-scattered component is associated with the narrow-line region.

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BAT AGN Spectroscopic Survey. XVI. General Physical Characteristics of BAT Blazars

Cited by 41 publications

References 69 publications

TXS 2116−077: A Gamma-Ray Emitting Relativistic Jet Hosted in a Galaxy Merger

TXS 2116−077: A Gamma-Ray Emitting Relativistic Jet Hosted in a Galaxy Merger

Multifrequency Observations of the Candidate Neutrino-emitting Blazar BZB J0955+3551

BAT AGN Spectroscopic Survey XXVII: scattered X-Ray radiation in obscured active galactic nuclei

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