The high energy view of blazars

Abstract

Abstract Beppo SAX contributed substantially to our understanding of the physics of blazars. This has been made possible mainly by its wide energy range and especially by its high energy detector. Together with the information coming from still higher energies we know at last the entire spectral energy distribution (SED) of blazars. Different subclasses of blazars have different SEDs, which seem to form a sequence, whose main parameter is the bolometric luminosity. Physically, the blazar sequence can be the result of different cooling rates by those electrons emitting most of the radiation we see. Blazars are among the most active sources we know of, and the coordinated variability at high energies gives very important clues about the physics of their jets: initially, they must transport energy in a dissipationless way. They radiate most of the entire bolometric luminosity we see at a preferred distance of a few hundreds of Schwarzschild radii. For powerful blazars, the emitted radiation must be a small fraction of the power transported by the jet, since the bulk of it is required to energize the radio lobes. These are the jets which likely have bulk relativistic speeds up to hundreds of kiloparsecs, as suggested by the bright X–ray knots detected by Chandra in many extended jets.