Dragon’s Lair: On the Large-scale Environment of BL Lac Objects

Abstract

Abstract The most elusive and extreme subclass of active galactic nuclei (AGNs), known as BL Lac objects, shows features that can only be explained as the result of relativistic effects occurring in jets pointing at a small angle with respect to the line of sight. A longstanding issue is the identification of the BL Lac parent population with jets oriented at larger angles. According to the “unification scenario” of AGNs, radio galaxies with low luminosity and an edge-darkened radio morphology are the most promising candidate parent population of BL Lacs. Here we compare the large-scale environment, an orientation-independent property, of well-defined samples of BL Lacs with samples of radio galaxies all lying in the local universe. Our study reveals that BL Lacs and radio galaxies live in significantly different environments, challenging predictions of the unification scenario. We propose a solution to this problem proving that large-scale environments of BL Lacs are statistically consistent with those of compact radio sources, known as FR 0s, and share similar properties. This implies that highly relativistic jets are ubiquitous and are the natural outcome of the accretion of gas into the deep gravitational potential well produced by supermassive black holes.