Polarization of radio cores as a test of the unified schemes

Abstract

In the unified schemes for extragalactic radio sources, the quasars and BL Lac objects are intrinsically similar to the Fanaroff-Riley class II and I radio galaxies respectively, but appear to be different because they are viewed at different angles to the line-of-sight. The quasars and BL Lac objects are observed at small viewing angles while the radio galaxies lie close to the plane of the sky. In such schemes, the quasar or BL Lac nucleus is hidden from our view by a putative torus when the source is inclined at a large angle to the line-of-sight and appears as a radio galaxy. Such a scenario should also affect the observed polarization properties of the cores, with the cores in the radio galaxies and weak-cored quasars being less polarized than the core-dominated quasars and BL Lacs due to Faraday depolarization by the magnetoionic medium in the obscuring torus or disk. In this paper, we report that the core polarization of radio galaxies and weak-cored quasars is indeed much smaller than for the core-dominated quasars and BL Lacs. We suggest that this is due to the depolarization caused by the obscuring torus or disk, providing further evidence in favour of the unified schemes.