The Connection between Jets, Accretion Disks, and Black Hole Mass in Blazars

Abstract

The properties of relativistic radio jets are thought to be closely connected with the properties of accretion disks in active galactic nuclei. We explore this issue using a sample of 35 blazars with very long baseline observations, for which we can estimate the kinetic powers of their relativistic jets, the bolometric luminosity of their accretion disks, and the masses of their black holes. Contrary to previous claims, we find that the jet kinetic power is significantly correlated with the disk luminosity. This supports the notion that the disk is somehow coupled to the jet, even on parsec scales. Moreover, we show that the correlation improves by including the black hole mass as a second parameter. The dominance of the jet, parameterized as the ratio of the jet kinetic power to the disk luminosity, is largely controlled by and is inversely correlated with the Eddington ratio of the accretion disk. This empirical relation should serve as a useful guide for theoretical models for jet formation.

Basic properties of Fermi blazars and the ‘blazar sequence’

“…The result is consistent with other authors (e.g. Rawlings & Saunders 1991;Falcke & Biermann 1995;Serjeant, Rawlings & Maddox 1998;Cao & Jiang 1999;Wang, Luo & Ho 2004;Liu, Jiang & Gu 2006;Xie et al 2007;Ghisellini, Tavecchio & Ghirlanda 2009a;Ghisellini et al 2009bGhisellini et al , 2010Ghisellini et al , 2011Gu, Cao & Jiang 2009;Sbarrato et al 2012). Linear regression is applied to analyze the correlation between broad line luminosity and jet power, and we obtain log LBLR ∼ (0.94 ± 0.12) log Pjet for Fermi blazars and log LBLR ∼ (0.39 ± 0.12) log Pjet for non-Fermi blazars.…”

“…The proportion of blazars of jet kinetic power estimated from extended radio luminosity in all sources was 28%. From Wang et al (2004), the uncertainty in the MBH − σ relation was 0.21 dex; the uncertainty on the zero point of the line width-luminositymass relation was approximately 0.5 dex; the MBH − MR correlation for quasar host galaxies had an uncertainty of 0.6 dex. So given the intrinsic uncertainty of the different black hole mass estimators and the heterogeneity of sample, we estimated that the individual BH masses may have an uncertainty as large as ∼1 dex.…”

“…The uncertainty in Pjet was dominated by the scatter in the correlation of Cavagnolo et al (2010) and corresponded to 0.7 dex. The uncertainties on broad line luminosity were based on the standard deviation of Mg II/Lyα, Hβ/Lyα and C IV/Lyα in the composite quasar spectrum of Francis et al (1991) (Wang et al 2004). We assumed that the uncertainties on broad line luminosity were to be 0.5 dex for all sources.…”

Minimal variability time scale – central black hole mass relation of theγ-ray loud blazars

“…For this object, we found two black hole mass estimates, both based on the reverberation-mapping calibrated virial mass estimator, log(M BH /M ) = 8.17 (Wang et al 2004), based on Hβ line width and extrapolated continuum luminosity, and two values, log(M BH /M ) = 8.91 ± 0.29 and log(M BH /M ) = 8.89 ± 0.15, based on Mg II and Hβ lines, respectively (Shaw et al 2012). Here we adopt a more recent estimate of Shaw et al (2012), conservatively taking log(M BH /M ) = 8.9 ± 0.3.…”

3C 216: A Powerful FR II Seyfert 1 Galaxy

“…Another method that is commonly used for estimating L bol in blazars is to compare the line strengths to a composite SED (Celotti et al 1997;Wang et al 2004). From Lawrence et al (1996) We estimate by two independent methods: first we use the M bh continuum flux density and the FWHM of the low-ionization BELs, and second we use the host galaxy bulge luminosity-mass relation.…”