Scientific Seminars
Search and study of blazars in the early Universe
Silvia Belladitta
INAF - Brera
2021-01-19 10:30 Brera - Sala virtuale -https://meet.google.com/imu-ibbn-cct
Blazars are radio-loud (RL) active galactic nuclei (AGNs) with relativistic jets pointing towards the observer.
Since their non-thermal radiation is relativistically amplified, and not obscured along the jet direction, blazars
are very bright and visible up to high redshifts.
The discovery of high-z blazars ensures the census, free from obscuration effects, of supermassive black
holes (SMBHs) hosted by RL AGNs in the early Universe, and provides constraints on the accretion mode,
mass and spin of the seed of SMBHs.
Indeed for each observed blazar we expect to find ~2Γ^2 (where Γ is the bulk Lorentz factor of the jet
plasma) misaligned RL AGNs, whose jets point in other directions with the same characteristics (e.g. radio
power, black hole mass, etc.).
Therefore the selection of blazar samples at high-z suitable for statistical studies and the discovery of more
blazars at the highest redshift (until z=6) represent the two best ways to study the RL AGN population in the
early Universe.
Selecting high-z blazar candidates requires a multi-wavelength approach and the use of large area surveys
that cover almost the total of the entire sky at a reasonable depth. In particular, we are carrying out a project
which combines optical, IR, and radio datasets to identify blazars at redshift z>4.0, pushing the search into a
range of redshift (z≥5.5) not yet explored for this type of AGNs, by also using the so-called dropout
technique.
First of all we selected a statistical radio flux limited sample of blazars at 4.0 |