THE KILO−PARSEC PROPERTIES OF BLAZARS A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of Purdue University by Nathaniel Jonathan Cooper In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2010 Purdue University West Lafayette, Indiana ii To my wife Kaliroi, my son Johannes, and my Mom and Dad. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost, I thank my advisor Matthew Lister. He suggested this disser- tation topic and without his guidance and patience this dissertation would not have been possible. I thank my committee member and Physics 670F professor, Stephen Durbin. Building the radio telescope in his class helped guide me to radio astronomy and his advice has always been invaluable. I also extend my thanks to committee member John Finley, he came through for me in when I was in a tight spot getting my paperwork submitted for my dissertation talk at the 216th AAS meeting, and he was always very helpful in Journal Club with his comments to my presentations. I thank my committee member Sergei Khlebnikov, who was also my professor in Introduction to Mechanics, Intermediate Optics, and Advanced Statistical Mechanics. His sense of humor made his classes a wonderful and insightful experience. And thanks to the other faculty and staff at Purdue, especially Andrew Hirsch my Sophomore Seminar and Science & Society professor and Ephraim Fischbach my Theoretical Methods of Physics professor both of whom gave the right advice at the right time to keep me on track, Russ Coverdale my undergraduate advisor who helped me in too many ways to count, Andrzej Lewicki for his guidance while I was a Teaching Assistant, Brian Todd for helping with my Preliminary Defense and Sandy Formica and Carol Buuck for helping me keep my i’s dotted and t’s crossed. I thank my family and friends for their support throughout the process of writing this dissertation: To my mom for always encouraging my interest in science, to my dad who always did his best to explain phenomena to me when I was a child, to my wife, Kaliroi, and mother−in−law, Eftihia, whose support has been unwavering, and iv to my high school friend and US Navy buddy John Jansen and my long time friend Jim Drury they helped in ways large and small too many time to mention. I thank Deborah Beck, my high school physics teacher. I always wanted to be a scientist and she helped me find out what kind I wanted to be. If she had not let me make up several labs by using parts in my dad’s garage, I would not be writing this dissertation. And a special thanks to Brandon Hogan, Sarma Kuchibhotla, Mihai Cara, Preeti Kharb, and Talvikki Hovatta for their guidance in this endeavor. This research was supported by NSF grant 0807860-AST, NASA-Fermi grant NNX08AV67G and the Purdue Research Foundation, and made use of the follow- ing resources: The NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Very Large Array (VLA), which is operated by The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). The NRAO is a facility of the National Science foundation, operated under coopera- tive agreement with Associated Universities, INC. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF TABLES ................................ vii LIST OF FIGURES ............................... ix SYMBOLS .................................... xi ABBREVIATIONS ................................ xii ABSTRACT ................................... xiii 1 INTRODUCTION .............................. 1 1.1 Active Galactic Nuclei ......................... 1 1.1.1 The Anatomy of AGNs ..................... 3 1.1.2 AGN Spectra .......................... 8 1.1.3 Radio Quiet AGNs ....................... 9 1.1.4 Radio Loud AGNs ....................... 10 1.2 Relativistic Effects in Blazar Research ................ 14 1.2.1 Relativistic Beaming ...................... 15 1.2.2 Superluminal Motion ...................... 15 1.2.3 Doppler Boosting ........................ 17 1.3 Unification Schemes ........................... 18 1.4 The MOJAVE Survey ......................... 20 1.5 Radio Telescopes used in MOJAVE .................. 20 1.5.1 The Very Large Base−line Array ............... 21 1.5.2 The Very Large Array ..................... 21 1.6 Goals of this Dissertation ........................ 22 2 KILOPARSEC PROPERTIES ........................ 25 2.1 VLA Observations ........................... 25 2.1.1 Images Acquired in the Fall 2004 − AL634 .......... 26 2.1.2 Images Acquired in June 2007 − AC874 ........... 27 2.1.3 Data Obtained from NRAO Archives and Previous Studies . 28 2.1.4 Observation and Image Data .................. 28 2.2 MOJAVE Sample Statistics ...................... 32 2.3 Extended Luminosity v. Intrinsic Power ............... 44 3 JET GEOMETRY − SIMPLE BENDS ................... 59 3.1 Previous Simple Bend Monte Carlo Simulations ........... 59 3.2 Simulating the MOJAVE Sample Population ............. 60 vi Page 3.2.1 Simulating General MOJAVE Variables ............ 61 3.2.2 Simulating φ and ζ....................... 66 3.2.3 Simulations with a Uniform Distribution of ζ......... 70 3.2.4 Simulations with a Gaussian Distribution of ζ ........ 75 3.2.5 Simulations with a Power−law Distribution of ζ....... 78 3.3 Summary ................................ 81 4 γ−RAY EMISSION vs. EXTENDED RADIO EMISSION ........ 85 4.1 γ−ray−Radio Emission Models .................... 86 4.2 Observations ............................... 86 4.3 Comparison with Previous Analysis .................. 87 4.4 Partial Correlation Analysis ...................... 88 4.5 Jet Power and γ−ray Luminosity ................... 92 4.6 Monte Carlo Simulations of Lγ vs. MOJAVE Lγ ........... 92 4.7 Calculating Correlations with Censored Data ............. 93 4.8 Core γ−ray Emission vs. Lobe γ−ray Emission ........... 102 4.9 Results .................................. 102 5 SUMMARY .................................. 105 5.1 Thesis Goals and Results ........................ 105 5.1.1 Image Catalog and Sample Statistics ............. 106 5.1.2 Jet Misalignment Angles .................... 107 5.1.3 Radio−γ−ray Correlation ................... 108 5.2 Future Work ............................... 110 5.2.1 eMERLIN Intermediate Scale Jet Survey ........... 110 5.2.2 Expanding the Search for FRII BL Lacs ........... 110 5.2.3 Radio Morphology Survey Based on Fermi Selection Criteria 111 A 1.4 GHZ VLA IMAGES OF THE MOJAVE SAMPLE POPULATION . 113 LIST OF REFERENCES ............................ 249 VITA ....................................... 255 vii LIST OF TABLES Table Page 2.1 A−Configuration VLA Observations of MOJAVE Sources at 1.4 GHz . 29 2.1 A−Configuration VLA Observations of MOJAVE Sources at 1.4 GHz . 30 2.1 A−Configuration VLA Observations of MOJAVE Sources at 1.4 GHz . 31 2.2 MOJAVE VLA 1.4 GHz Image Parameters ................ 36 2.2 MOJAVE VLA 1.4 GHz Image Parameters ................ 39 2.2 MOJAVE VLA 1.4 GHz Image Parameters ................ 40 2.3 MOJAVE VLA 1.4 GHz Image Measurements .............. 41 2.3 MOJAVE VLA 1.4 GHz Image Measurements .............. 42 2.3 MOJAVE VLA 1.4 GHz Image Measurements .............. 43 2.4 Single Dish and Short Base−line Observations of MOJAVE Sources at 1.4 GHz ..................................... 46 2.4 Single Dish and Short Base−line Observations of MOJAVE Sources at 1.4 GHz ..................................... 47 2.4 Single Dish and Short Base−line Observations of MOJAVE Sources at 1.4 GHz ..................................... 48 2.4 Single Dish and Short Base−line Observations of MOJAVE Sources at 1.4 GHz ..................................... 49 2.4 Single Dish and Short Base−line Observations of MOJAVE Sources at 1.4 GHz ..................................... 50 2.4 Single Dish and Short Base−line Observations of MOJAVE Sources at 1.4 GHz ..................................... 51 2.4 Single Dish and Short Base−line Observations of MOJAVE Sources at 1.4 GHz ..................................... 52 2.4 Single Dish and Short Base−line Observations of MOJAVE Sources at 1.4 GHz ..................................... 53 2.4 Single Dish and Short Base−line Observations of MOJAVE Sources at 1.4 GHz ..................................... 54 viii Table Page 2.4 Single Dish and Short Base−line Observations of MOJAVE Sources at 1.4 GHz ..................................... 55 2.4 Single Dish and Short Base−line Observations of MOJAVE Sources at 1.4 GHz ..................................... 56 2.4 Single Dish and Short Base−line Observations of MOJAVE Sources at 1.4 GHz ..................................... 57 3.1 χ2 of ζ Monte Carlo Simulations with Gaussian Γ Distributions .... 82 3.1 χ2 of ζ Monte Carlo Simulations with Gaussian Γ Distributions .... 83 3.2 χ2 of ζ Monte Carlo Simulations with Power Law Γ Distributions . 84 4.1 ASURV Spearman Ranks for γ−ray to Radio Emission ......... 95 4.2 ASURV Spearman Ranks for γ−ray Emission, de−Boosted by δ2−α, to Radio Emission ............................... 96 4.3 ASURV Spearman Ranks for γ−ray Emission, de−Boosted by δ3−2α, to Radio Emission ............................... 97 ix LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1.1 3C 273 Spectrum from Schmidt [1963] .................. 2 1.2 AGN model taken from Urry & Padovani [1995]. ............. 5 1.3 WSRT 0.6 GHz image of FR I 3C 31 (0104+321), taken from Leahy[2003]. 12 1.4 VLA 5 GHz image of FR II Cygnus A (1957+405), taken from Perley, Dreher, & Cowan [1984]. .......................... 13 1.5 1.4 GHz VLA-A image of radio quasar