Abstract
If specially oriented relativistic jets are a defining characteristic of BL Lac objects as a class, then several consequences follow unavoidably. First, the observed emission is relativistically boosted and may in fact represent only a small fraction of the emitted luminosity of the source. This tends to hide the identity of the “parent population” (those objects with misdirected jets) since intrinsic characteristics may be swamped by the boosted radiation. Second, the parent population must be relatively numerous since only a small fraction of randomly oriented jets would point toward us. In many cases, this has been used in a naive way to comment on possible parent populations for BL Lac objects (and to argue, erroneously, against the beaming hypothesis). Third — the point stressed in this paper — the observed luminosity distribution of BL Lac objects depends on both the luminosity function (LF) of the parent population and the properties of the jet (its speed and orientation). For simple power-law parent LFs, the shape of the LF for the beamed objects is a distinctive broken power-law which is very flat at low luminosities. For more complicated parent LFs, the beamed LF will still be at least as flat at the low luminosity end.
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