The jet-disk symbiosis. I. Radio to X-ray emission models for quasars

Abstract

Starting from the assumption that radio jets and accretion disks are symbiotic features present in radio loud and radio quiet quasars we scale the bulk power of radio jets with the accretion power by adding mass- and energy conservation of the whole jet-disk system to the standard Blandford \& Königl theory for compact radio cores. The model depends on only few parameters and can be constrained by observations. Thus we are able to show that radio and X-ray fluxes (SSC emission) of cores and lobes and typical dimensions of radio loud quasars are consistent with a jet being produced in the central engine. We present a synthetic broadband spectrum from radio to X-ray for a jet-disk system. The only way to explain the high efficiency of radio loud objects is to postulate that these objects consist of `maximal jets' with `total equipartition' where the magnetic energy flow of the jet is comparable to the kinetic jet power and the total jet power is a large fraction of the disk power. As the number of electrons is limited by the accretion flow, this is only possible when the minimum Lorentz factor of the electron distribution is $γ_{\rm e,min}\ga100$ ($E\ga 50 {\rm MeV}$) or/and a large number of pairs are present. Such an electron/positron population would be a necessary consequence of hadronic interactions and may lead to some interesting effects in the low frequency self-absorbed spectrum. Emission from radio weak quasars can be explained with an initially identical jet. The difference between radio loud and radio weak could be due to a different efficiency in accelerating relativistic electrons on the sub-parsec scale. Finally we demonstrate that in order to appease the ravenous hunger of radio loud jets its production must be somehow linked to the dissipation process in the inner part of the disk.