The relationship between the radio core dominance parameter and the spectral index in different classes of extragalactic radio sources

Abstract

Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) have two major classes, namely radio loud AGNs and radio quiet AGNs. A small subset of the radio-loud AGNs is called blazars, which display extreme observational properties, such as rapid variability, high luminosity, high and variable polarization, and superluminal motion. All of those observational properties are probably due to a relativistic beaming effect with the jet pointing close to the line of sight. Observations suggest that the orientation can be expressed by a core-dominance parameter, R. The R, to some extent, is associated with the beaming effect. Blazars are believed to be unified with Fanaroff & Riley type I/II (FRI/II) radio galaxies. In this work, we collected relevant observations from the literature for a sample of 1223 AGNs including 77 BL Lacertae objects, 495 quasars, 460 galaxies, 119 FRs and 72 unidentified sources, and calculated the core-dominance parameters and spectral indexes, discussed the relationship between the two parameters, and gave some discussions. Our analysis suggests that the core-dominance parameters in BL Lacertae objects are larger than those in quasars and galaxies, and the radio spectral indexes in BL Lacertae objects are lower than those in quasars and galaxies. We also found that the core-dominance parameter-spectral index correlation exists for a large sample presented in this work, which may come from a relativistic beaming effect.