arXiv subjects

Junhui Fan

Publications and source records attributed to Junhui Fan.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2023

The `blazar sequence' in TeV band

The `blazar sequence' has been proposed for more than 20 years, yet its nature is still unclear. In this work, for the first time, we expand this topic to the TeV band by using a sample of 58 TeV blazars including 48 blazars in the quiescent state and 21 blazars in the flaring state. We investigate the correlation between the TeV luminosity, which has been compensated for attenuation from extragalactic background light, and the synchrotron peak frequency. We note that there is no correlation between TeV luminosity and peak frequency in the quiescent state and a strong anti-correlation in the flaring state for the observed value. However, there is a strong positive correlation in both the quiescent state and the flaring state for the intrinsic value. This indicates that the blazar sequence is shown in the flaring state rather than in the quiescent state for the observed value and the blazar sequence is not present in both two states after removing the beaming effect. In addition, to confirm whether the beaming effect results in the blazar sequence, we compare the \textit{Fermi} $γ$-ray luminosity between the quiescent state and the flaring state. We find the \textit{Fermi} $γ$-ray luminosity in the flaring state is greater than that in the quiescent state and the Doppler factor in the flaring state is greater. We suggest the blazar sequence in the flaring state may be due to the stronger beaming effect.

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arXiv2022

Variability and Spectral Behavior of Gamma-ray Flares of 3C 279

3C 279 showed enhanced flux variations in Fermi-LAT γ-ray observations from January to June 2018. We present a detailed Fermi-LAT analysis to investigate the variability and spectral behaviors of 3C 279 during the γ-ray flares in 2018. In this work, we analyzed the γ-ray spectra and found that the spectra in either the flaring or quiescent states do not show any clear breaks (or cutoffs). This indicates that the dissipation region is outside the broad-line region, and the energy dissipation may be due to the inverse Compton process of scattering the dust torus infrared photons, this result is also consistent with that in Tolamatti et al. An external inverse Compton scattering of dusty torus (DT) photons is employed to calculate the broadband spectral energy distribution (SED). This model was further supported by the fact that we found flare decay timescale was consistent with the cooling time of relativistic electrons through DT photons. During the SED modeling, a relatively harder spectrum for the electron energy distribution (EED) is found and suggests these electrons may not be accelerated by the shock that happened in the dissipation region. Besides, the magnetic reconnection is also ruled out due to a low magnetization ratio. Thus, we suggest an injection of higher-energy electrons from outside the blob and raising the flare.

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arXiv2022

Optical flux and spectral variability of BL Lacertae during its historical high outburst in 2020

BL Lacertae had undergone a series of historical high flux activity over a year, from August 2020 in the optical to VHE $γ$-rays. In this paper, we report on optical flux and spectral variability of the first historical maxima outburst event during October-November in g, r and i bands with the 1.26m telescope at Xinglong observatory, China. We detected significant intranight variations with amplitude rising up to $\sim 30$%, when the fastest variability timescale is found to be a few tens of minutes, giving an emitting region size of the order $10^{-3}$ pc, which corresponds to $\sim 100$ Schwarzschild radius of the central black hole, likely coming from some jet mini-structures. Unlike on intranight timescale, a clear frequency dependent pattern along with symmetric timescales ($\sim$ 11d) of flux variation are detected on long timescale. The spectral evolution was predominated by flattening of the spectra with increasing brightness i.e., a bluer-when-brighter trend in 96% of the cases. On the night before the outburst peak, the color indices clustered in two distinct branches in color--magnitude diagram within a period of $\sim$ 6 hours that is connected to a hard-soft-hard spectral evolution trend extracted from time-resolved spectra. Such trend has never seen in BL Lac or any other blazars before to the best of our knowledge. The results obtained in this study can be explained in the context of shock induced particle acceleration or magnetic re-connection in the jet where turbulent processes most likely resulted the asymmetric flux variation on nightly timescale.

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arXiv2022

An extensive study of blazar broad emission line: Changing-look blazars and Baldwin effect

It is known that the blazar jet emissions are dominated by non-thermal radiation while the accretion disk jets are normally dominated by thermal emission. In this work, our aim is to study the connection between the two types of emission by investigating the correlation between the blazar emission line intensity property, which embodies the nature of accretion disk, and the $γ$-ray flux property, which is the representative of jet emission. We compiled a sample of 656 blazars with available emission line equivalent widths ($EW$), the GeV $γ$-ray flux, and the SED information from the literature. In this work, we found 55 previous BCUs are now identified as FSRQs, and found 52 Changing-look blazars based on their $EW$ and 45 of them are newly confirmed. These Changing-look blazars have a larger accretion ratio (${\dot M}/{\dot M}_{\rm Edd}$) than BL Lac objects. In addition, we suggest that the lower synchrotron peak blazars (LSPs) could be the source of Changing-look blazars because 90.7\% of the Changing-look blazars in this work are confirmed as LSPs. An anti-correlation between $EW$ and continuum intensity, the so-called global Baldwin effect (BEff) has been confirmed. We suggest the steeper global BEff observed for blazar than for radio-quiet active galactic nuclei (RQ-AGNs) is caused by the inverse Compton scattering of broad-emission-line photons. This interpretation is further supported by the positive correlation between the emission line $EW$ and intrinsic inverse Compton luminosity.

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arXiv2022

Constraining the $γ$-ray Emission Region for Fermi-Detected FSRQs by the Seed Photon Approach

The location of $γ$-ray emitting region in blazars has been an open issue for several decades and is still being debated. We use the Paliya et al. sample of 619 $γ$-ray-loud flat-spectrum radio quasars with the available spectral energy distributions, and employ a seed photon factor approach, to locate the $γ$-rays production region. This method efficiently set up a relation between the peak frequencies and luminosities for the synchrotron emission and inverse Compton scattering, together with a combination of the energy density and characteristic energy for the external seed photon field, namely, $\sqrt{U_0}/ε_0$, an indicative factor of seed photons (SF) in units of Gauss. By means of comparing it with canonical values of broad-line region and molecular dusty torus, we principally ascertain that the GeV emission is originated far beyond the BLR and close to the DT -- farther out at pc scales from the central black hole, which supports a {\it far-site} scenario for $γ$-ray blazars. We probe the idea that inverse Compton scattering of infrared seed photons is happening in the Thomson regime. This approach and our findings are based on the validity of the External Compton model, which is applicable to understand the GeV emission mechanism in FSRQs. However, the completeness of this framework has been challenged by reports of neutrino emission from blazars. Thus we also shed new light on the neutrino production region by using our derived results since blazars are promising neutrino emitters.

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arXiv2022

The radio dichotomy of active galactic nuclei

The question of radio dichotomy in the active galactic nuclei (AGNs) is still in debate even it has been proposed for more than forty years. In order to solve the old riddle, we collect a sample of AGNs with optical $B$ band and radio 6cm wavelength data to analyze the radio loudness ${\rm log}R$. Our results indicate a separation of ${\rm log}R = \langle 1.37 \pm 0.02 \rangle$ between radio-loud (RL) AGNs and radio-quiet (RQ) AGNs, suggest the existence of an RL/RQ dichotomy. For the first time, we suggest combining radio luminosity and radio loudness as a double-criterion to divide AGNs into RLs and RQs to avoid misclassification problems that may happen in the single-criterion scenario, we propose the double-criterion dividing line ${\rm log}L_{\rm 6cm} = -2.7{\rm log}R +44.3$ by using a machine learning method. In addition, the key point of the RL/RQ dichotomy is the origin of radio emission for the two classes, we suggest the radio emission from RLs and RQs share the same origin, e.g. jets and mini-jets (aborted-jet or outflow), through a correlation study between radio 6cm luminosity and optical $B$ band luminosity.

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arXiv2021

The Estimation of Fundamental Physics Parameters for Fermi-LAT Blazars

Aiming to delineate the physical framework of blazars, we present an effective method to estimate four important parameters based on the idea proposed by \citet{BK95}, including the upper limit of central black hole mass $M$, the Doppler factor $δ$, the distance along the axis to the site of the $γ$-ray production $d$ (which then can be transformed into the location of $γ$-ray-emitting region $R_γ$) and the propagation angle with respect to the axis of the accretion disk $Φ$. To do so, we adopt an identical sample with 809 {\it Fermi}-LAT-detected blazars which had been compiled in \citet{Pei20PASA}. These four derived parameters stepping onto the stage may shed new light on our knowledge regarding $γ$-ray blazars. With regard to the paper of \citet{BK95}, we obtain several new perspectives, mainly in: (1) putting forward an updated demarcation between BL Lacs and FSRQs based on the relation between broad-line region luminosity and disk luminosity both measured in Eddington units, i.e., $L_{\rm disk}/L_{\rm Edd}=4.68\times10^{-3}$, indicating that there are some differences between BL Lacs and FSRQs on the accretion power in the disk; (2) proposing that there is a so-called `appareling zone', a potential transition field between BL Lacs and FSRQs where the changing-look blazars perhaps reside; (3) the location of $γ$-ray emission region is principally constrained outside the broad-line region, and for some BL Lacs are also away from the dusty molecular torus, which means the importance of emission components in the jet.

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arXiv2021

The relativistic jet and its central engine of $Fermi$ blazars

Jet origination is one of the most important questions of AGN, yet it stays obscure. In this work, we made use of information of emission lines, spectral energy distributions (SEDs), \textit{Fermi}-LAT $γ$-ray emission, construct a blazar sample that contains 667 sources. We notice that jet power originations are different for BL Lacs and for FSRQs. The correlation between jet power $P_{\rm jet}$ and the normalized disk luminosity $L_{\rm Disk}/L_{\rm Edd}$ shows a slope of -1.77 for BL Lacs and a slope of 1.16 for FSRQs. The results seem to suggest that BL Lac jets are powered by extracting blackhole rotation energy, while FSRQ jets are mostly powered by accretion disks. Meanwhile, we find the accretion ratio $\dot{M} / \dot{M}_{\rm Edd}$ increase with the normalized $γ$-ray luminosity. Base on this, we propose a dividing line, ${\rm log} (L_{\rm BLR}/L_{\rm Edd}) = 0.25 \ {\rm log} (L_{\rm γ}/L_{\rm Edd}) - 2.23$, to separate FSRQs and BL Lacs in the diagram of $L_{\rm BLR}/L_{\rm Edd}$ against $L_{\rm γ}/L_{\rm Edd}$ through using the machine learning method, the method gives an accuracy of 84.5\%. In addition, we propose an empirical formula, $M_{\rm BH}/M_{\rm \odot} \simeq L_{\rm γ}^{0.65}/21.46$, to estimate blackhole mass based on a strong correlation between $γ$-ray luminosity and blackhole mass. Strong $γ$-ray emission is typical in blazars, and the emission is always boosted by a Doppler beaming effect. In this work, we generate a new method to estimate a lower-limit of Doppler factor $δ$ and give $δ_{\rm BL Lac} = 7.94$ and $δ_{\rm FSRQ} = 11.55$.

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arXiv2021

The Powers of Relativistic Jets depend on the Spin of Accreting Supermassive Black Hole

Theoretical models show that the power of relativistic jets of active galactic nuclei depends on the spin and mass of the central supermassive black holes, as well as the accretion. Here we report an analysis of archival observations of a sample of blazars. We find a significant correlation between jet kinetic power and the spin of supermassive black holes. At the same time, we use multiple linear regression to analyze the relationship between jet kinetic power and accretion, spin and black hole mass. We find that the spin of supermassive black holes and accretion are the most important contribution to the jet kinetic power. The contribution rates of both the spin of supermassive black holes and accretion are more than 95\%. These results suggest that the spin energy of supermassive black holes powers the relativistic jets. The jet production efficiency of almost all Fermi blazars can be explained by moderately thin magnetically arrested accretion disks around rapidly spinning black holes.

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arXiv2020

From the Fermi blazar sequence to the relation between Fermi blazars and gamma-ray Narrow-line Seyfert 1 Galaxies

We use the third catalog of blazars detected by Fermi/LAT (3LAC) and gamma-ray Narrow-line Seyfert 1 Galaxies (gamma-NLSy1s) to study the blazar sequence and relationship between them. Our results are as follows: (i) There is a weak anti-correlation between synchrotron peak frequency and peak luminosity for both Fermi blazars and gamma-NLSy1s, which supports the blazar sequence. However, after Doppler correction, the inverse correlation disappeared, which suggests that anti-correlation between synchrotron peak frequency and peak luminosity is affected by the beaming effect. (ii) There is a significant anti-correlation between jet kinetic power and synchrotron peak frequency for both Fermi blazars and gamma-NLSy1s, which suggests that the gamma-NLSy1s could fit well into the original blazar sequence. (iii) According to previous work, the relationship between synchrotron peak frequency and synchrotron curvature can be explained by statistical or stochastic acceleration mechanisms. There are significant correlations between synchrotron peak frequency and synchrotron curvature for whole sample, Fermi blazars and BL Lacs, respectively. The slopes of the correlation are consistent with statistical acceleration. For FSRQs, LBLs, IBLs, HBLs, and gamma-NLS1s, we also find a significant correlation, but in these cases the slopes can not be explained by previous theoretical models. (iv) The slope of relation between synchrotron peak frequency and synchrotron curvature in gamma-NLS1s is large than that of FSRQs and BL Lacs. This result may imply that the cooling dominates over the acceleration process for FSRQs and BL Lacs, while gamma-NLS1s is the opposite.

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arXiv2020

Beamed and unbeamed emission of $γ$-ray blazars

A two-component model of radio emission has been used to explain some radio observational properties of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) and, in particular, of blazars. In this work, we extend the two-component idea to the $γ$-ray emission and assume that the total $γ$-ray output of blazars consists of relativistically beamed and unbeamed components. The basic idea leverages the correlation between the radio core-dominance parameter and the $γ$-ray beaming factor. To do so, we evaluate this correlation for a large sample of 584 blazars taken from the fourth source catalog of the Fermi Large Area Telescope (Fermi-LAT) and correlated their $γ$-ray core-dominance parameters with radio core-dominance parameters. The $γ$-ray beaming factor is then used to estimate the beamed and unbeamed components. Our analysis confirms that the $γ$-ray emission in blazars is mainly from the beamed component.

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arXiv2020

The estimation of $γ$-ray Doppler factor for Fermi/LAT-detected blazars

Blazars are a subclass of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) with extreme observation properties, which is caused by the beaming effect, expressed by a Doppler factor, in a relativistic jet. Doppler factor is an important parameter in the blazars paradigm to indicate all of the observation properties, and many methods were proposed to estimate its value. In this paper, we present a method following Mattox et al. to calculate the lower limit on gamma-ray Doppler factor for 809 selected Fermi/LAT-detected gamma-ray blazars by adopting the available gamma-ray and X-ray data. Our sample included 342 flat-spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs) and 467 BL Lac objects (BL Lacs), out of which 507 sources are compiled with available radio core-dominance parameter (R) from our previous study. Our calculation shows that the average values of the lower limit on gamma-ray Doppler factor for FSRQs and BL Lacs are 6.87 and 4.31, respectively. We compare and discuss our results with those from the literature. We found that the derived lower limit on gamma-ray Doppler factor for some sources are higher than that from the radio estimation, which could be possibly explained by the jet bending within those blazars. Our results also suggest that the gamma-ray and radio regions perhaps share the same relativistic effects. The gamma-ray Doppler factor has been found to be correlated with both the gamma-ray luminosity and core-dominance parameter, implying that the jet is possibly continuous in the gamma-ray bands, and R is perhaps an indicator for a beaming effect.

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arXiv2020

Comparison between $Fermi$ Detected and non-$Fermi$ Detected Superluminal Sources

Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) have been attracting research attention due to their special observable properties. Specifically, a majority of AGNs are detected by Fermi-LAT missions, but not by Fermi-LAT, which raises the question of whether any differences exist between the two. To answer this issue, we compile a sample of 291 superluminal AGNs (189 FDSs and 102 non-FDSs) from available multi-wavelength radio, optical, and X-ray (or even $γ$-ray) data and Doppler factors and proper motion ($μ$) (or apparent velocity ($β_{\rm{app}}$)); calculated the apparent velocity from their proper motion, Lorentz factor ($Γ$), viewing angle ($ϕ$) and co-moving viewing angle ($ϕ_{co}$) for the sources with available Doppler factor ($δ$); and performed some statistical analyses for both types. Our study indicated that1. In terms of average values, FDSs have higher proper motions ($μ$), apparent velocities ($β_{\rm app}$), Doppler factor ($δ$), Lorentz factor ($Γ$), and smaller viewing angle ($ϕ$). Nevertheless, there is no clear difference in co-moving viewing angles ($ϕ_{\rm co}$).

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arXiv2020

Efficient Fermi Source Identification with Machine Learning Methods

In this work, Machine Learning (ML) methods are used to efficiently identify the unassociated sources and the Blazar Candidate of Uncertain types (BCUs) in the Fermi-LAT Third Source Catalog (3FGL). The aims are twofold: 1) to distinguish the Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) from others (non-AGNs) in the unassociated sources; 2) to identify BCUs into BL Lacertae objects (BL Lacs) or Flat Spectrum Radio Quasars (FSRQs). Two dimensional reduction methods are presented to decrease computational complexity, where Random Forest (RF), Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) and Generative Adversarial Nets (GAN) are trained as individual models. In order to achieve better performance, the ensemble technique is further explored. It is also demonstrated that grid search method is of help to choose the hyper-parameters of models and decide the final predictor, by which we have identified 748 AGNs out of 1010 unassociated sources, with an accuracy of 97.04%. Within the 573 BCUs, 326 have been identified as BL Lacs and 247 as FSRQs, with an accuracy of 92.13%.

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arXiv2020

Further evidences of superluminal AGNs as $γ$-ray sources

In our previous work in Xiao et al. (2019), we suggested that 6 superluminal sources could be gamma-ray candidates, and in fact 5 of them have been confirmed in the fourth Fermi-LAT source catalogue (4FGL). In this work, based on the 4FGL, we report a sample of 229 Fermi detected superluminal sources (FDSs) including 40 new FDSs and 62 non-Fermi detected superluminal sources (non-FDSs). Thus, we believe that all superluminal sources should have $γ$-ray emissions, and superluminal motion could also be a clue to detect $γ$-ray emission from active galactic nuclei (AGN). We present a new approach of Doppler factor estimate through the study of the $γ$-ray luminosity ($L_{\rm γ}$) and of the viewing angle ($ϕ$).

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arXiv2020

Multicolor Optical Monitoring of the Blazar S5 0716+714 from 2017 to 2019

We continuously monitored the blazar S5 0716+714 in the optical $g$, $r$ and $i$ bands from Nov. 10, 2017 to Jun. 06, 2019. The total number of observations is 201 nights including 26973 data points. This is a very large quasi-simultaneous multicolor sample for the blazar. The average time spans and time resolutions are 3.4 hours and 2.9 minutes per night, respectively. During the period of observations, the target source in the $r$ band brightens from $14^{\rm m}.16$ to $12^{\rm m}.29$ together with five prominent sub-flares, and then first becomes fainter to $14^{\rm m}.76$ and again brightens to $12^{\rm m}.94$ with seven prominent sub-flares. For the long-term variations, we find a strong flatter when brighter (FWB) trend at a low flux state and then a weak FWB trend at a higher flux state. A weak FWB trend at a low flux state and then a strong FWB trend at a higher flux state are also reported. Most of sub-flares show the strong FWB trends, except for two flares with a weak FWB trend. The particle acceleration and cooling mechanisms together with the superposition of different FWB-slopes from sub-flares are likely to explain the optical color behaviours. A scenario of bent jet is discussed.

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arXiv2019

Correlation Analysis for Gamma-ray (radio) and Broad Line Emissions of Fermi Blazars

In this work, we compiled a sample of 202 Fermi/LAT blazars with available broad line emissions. Out of the 202 sources, 66 have known Doppler factors. The correlation between ($γ$-ray) and broad-line emission, and that between radio and broad-line emission are investigated by removing the effects of redshift and beaming boosting for the whole sample and the subclasses, flat spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs) and BL Lacertae objects (BL Lacs) respectively. We obtained a strong positive correlation between ($γ$-ray) and broad-line emission and between radio and broad-line emission for the 202 blazars; It is worth noting that the correlation still exists after removing redshift effect. For the 66 sources with Doppler factors, there is also a positive correlation between ($γ$-ray) and broad-line emission after removing the Doppler factors, as well as that between radio and broad-line emission. Our analysis suggest that 1. There are strong correlations between the ($γ$-ray) and the broad line emission for the whole blazar sample and their subclasses. The correlations exist when the redshift effect is removed for the whole sample and their subclasses, confirming the results by Ghisellini et al. (2014) and Chen (2018). 2. For the 66 blazars with available Doppler factors, a strong correlation between the broad line emission and the Doppler factor is found. The correlation between the ($γ$-ray) and the broad line emission exists after the Doppler factor effect is removed. Similar results for 1 and 2 also obtained between radio and broad-line emission. 3. Our analysis suggests a robust connection between the accretion process and the jet.

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arXiv2019

Evaluating the optical classification of Fermi BCUs using machine learning

In the third catalog of active galactic nuclei detected by the Fermi-LAT (3LAC) Clean Sample, there are 402 blazars candidates of uncertain type (BCU). Due to the limitations of astronomical observation or intrinsic properties, it is difficult to classify blazars using optical spectroscopy. The potential classification of BCUs using machine learning algorithms is essential. Based on the 3LAC Clean Sample, we collect 1420 Fermi blazars with 8 parameters of γ-ray photon spectral index, radio flux, flux density, curve significance, the integral photon flux in 100 to 300 MeV, 0.3 to 1 GeV, 10 to 100 GeV and variability index. Here, we apply 4 different supervised machine learning (SML) algorithms (\emph{Decision trees, Random forests, support vector machines and Mclust Gaussian finite mixture models}) to evaluate the classification of BCUs based on the direct observational properties. All the 4 methods can perform exceedingly well with a more accuracy and can effective forecast the classification of Fermi BCUs. The evaluating results show the results of these methods (SML) are valid and robust, where, about 1/4 sources are FSRQs and 3/4 are BL Lacs in 400 BCUs, which are consistent with some other recent results. Although a number of factors influence the accuracy of SML, the results are stable at a fixed ratio 1:3 between FSRQs and BL Lacs, which suggests that the SML can provides an effective method to evaluate the potential classification of BCUs. Among the 4 methods, Mclust Gaussian Mixture Modelling has the highest accuracy for our training sample (4/5, seed=123).

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