TY - JOUR
T1 - Modeling the Spectral Energy Distributions and Spectropolarimetry of Blazars - Application to 4C+01.02 in 2016-2017
AU - Schutte, Hester M.
AU - Britto, Richard J.
AU - Böttcher, Markus
AU - Van Soelen, Brian
AU - Marais, Johannes P.
AU - Kaur, Amanpreet
AU - Falcone, Abraham D.
AU - Buckley, David A.H.
AU - Rajoelimanana, Andry F.
AU - Cooper, Justin
N1 - Funding Information:
B.v.S. and J.P.M. are supported by the NRF of South Africa (grant Nos. 116300, 100259).
Funding Information:
This research has been made possible through a Large Science Program; the SALT ToO program “Observing the Transient Universe”. Spectropolarimetry observations reported in this paper were obtained with the SALT under program 2016-2-LSP-001 (PI: D. A. H. Buckley). This work makes use of observations from the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope (LCOGT) network under a dedicated transient program (PI: B. van Soelen). Radio through UV archival data were taken from NED, WISE, and GALEX, and the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory (Swift)–X-ray Telescope (XRT) data were used.
Funding Information:
The Fermi-LAT Collaboration acknowledges generous ongoing support from a number of agencies and institutes that have supported both the development and the operation of the LAT as well as scientific data analysis. These include the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Department of Energy in the United States, the Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique / Institut National de Physique Nucléaire et de Physique des Particules in France, the Agenzia Spaziale Italiana and the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare in Italy, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) in Japan, and the K. A. Wallenberg Foundation, the Swedish Research Council and the Swedish National Space Board in Sweden.
Funding Information:
The work of M.B. is supported through the South African Research Chair Initiative (SARChI) of the NRF and the Department of Science and Innovation of South Africa, under SARChI Chair grant No. 64789.
Funding Information:
H.M.S. acknowledges support from the National Research Foundation (NRF) 18
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.
PY - 2022/2/1
Y1 - 2022/2/1
N2 - The optical radiation emitted by blazars contains contributions from synchrotron radiation by relativistic electrons in the jets, as well as thermal radiation emitted mainly by the accretion disk (AD), the broad-line region (BLR), and the host galaxy. The unpolarized radiation components from the AD, BLR, and host galaxy present themselves by decreasing the total polarization in the optical/ultraviolet (UV) spectrum. A combined model for the spectral energy distribution (SED) and degree of optical/UV polarization is constructed, enabling the disentanglement of the synchrotron and AD components. Our model is applied to the multiwavelength SED and spectropolarimetry observations of the flat-spectrum radio quasar 4C+01.02 (z = 2.1) in its 2016 July-August flaring state and 2017 July-August quiescent state, using data from the Fermi Large Area Telescope, the Southern African Large Telescope, and the Las Cumbres Observatory network of telescopes. By constraining the AD component, the mass of the supermassive black hole is obtained as ∼3 × 109 M ⊙. Furthermore, the model retrieves the characteristics of the relativistic electron distribution in the jet and the degree of ordering of the magnetic field. Our results highlight the potential of spectropolarimetry observations for disentangling thermal from nonthermal (jet) emission components, thus revealing the physics of particle acceleration and high-energy emission in active galactic nucleus jets.
AB - The optical radiation emitted by blazars contains contributions from synchrotron radiation by relativistic electrons in the jets, as well as thermal radiation emitted mainly by the accretion disk (AD), the broad-line region (BLR), and the host galaxy. The unpolarized radiation components from the AD, BLR, and host galaxy present themselves by decreasing the total polarization in the optical/ultraviolet (UV) spectrum. A combined model for the spectral energy distribution (SED) and degree of optical/UV polarization is constructed, enabling the disentanglement of the synchrotron and AD components. Our model is applied to the multiwavelength SED and spectropolarimetry observations of the flat-spectrum radio quasar 4C+01.02 (z = 2.1) in its 2016 July-August flaring state and 2017 July-August quiescent state, using data from the Fermi Large Area Telescope, the Southern African Large Telescope, and the Las Cumbres Observatory network of telescopes. By constraining the AD component, the mass of the supermassive black hole is obtained as ∼3 × 109 M ⊙. Furthermore, the model retrieves the characteristics of the relativistic electron distribution in the jet and the degree of ordering of the magnetic field. Our results highlight the potential of spectropolarimetry observations for disentangling thermal from nonthermal (jet) emission components, thus revealing the physics of particle acceleration and high-energy emission in active galactic nucleus jets.
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U2 - 10.3847/1538-4357/ac3cb5
DO - 10.3847/1538-4357/ac3cb5
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85125866150
SN - 0004-637X
VL - 925
JO - Astrophysical Journal
JF - Astrophysical Journal
IS - 2
M1 - 139
ER -