Abstract
Analysis of VLBI data obtained on the VLBA reveals an absence of BL Lac objects with high degrees of circular polarization (>0.4%) detected among quasars. This cannot be due to observational selection effects: such objects should have been detected if the distributions of the degree of circular polarization for BL Lac objects and quasars were the same. This observational result provides new evidence for the existence of fundamental differences in the “central engines“ of objects in these two optical classes, which lead to different physical properties of their relativistic jets, such as the composition of the jet plasma (e −−e + or e −−p); the energy spectra of the particles; the magnitude, geometry and degree of order of the jet magnetic field; the angular momentum of the black hole; etc.
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