Jet Power of Jetted Active Galactic Nuclei: Implications for Evolution and Unification

Abstract

We construct samples of jetted active galactic nuclei (AGNs) with low-frequency radio data from the recently released TGSS AD1 catalog at 150 MHz. With these samples, we compare the properties of jet power for blazars, radio-loud narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies (RL-NLS1s), young radio sources (YRSs), and radio galaxies. The jet–disk connection, and the unification of jetted AGNs are explored. On the Eddington ratio–Eddington-scaled jet power plane, jetted AGNs can generally be divided into two populations. Low power radio galaxies, low excitation FR IIs (LEG/FR IIs), and most YRSs show larger jet power than accretion power, while on the contrary FSRQs, RL-NLS1s, and high excitation FR IIs (HEG/FR IIs) show larger accretion power than jet power. LEG/FR IIs share similar jet power properties with HEG/FR IIs, while their accretion properties are different from the latter. These facts suggest an evolutional sequence from HEG/FR IIs, LEG/FR IIs to FR Is, where the accretion and jet activities get dimmed gradually. LEG/FR IIs are the transitional objects that accretion processes have switched off, while jets are still active. After correcting the contribution from the radio core of blazars, the unification between blazars and radio galaxies is confirmed with the jet power distributions. The unification that involved RL-NLS1s is more complicated than the simple scenarios of black hole growth or orientation effect. In addition, our results manifest that low synchrotron peaked BL Lac objects (LBLs) contain two distinct groups regarding the distribution of jet power, with one group being similar to FSRQs and the other similar to intermediate synchrotron peaked BL Lac objects. The LBLs with higher jet powers might be the aligned counterparts of LEG/FR IIs.