2008/11/30 by D. Bhattacharya, Debbijoy Bhattacharya, P. Sreekumar +3 · 13 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Active galactic nucleus #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Exponential function #Function (biology) #Luminosity #Luminosity function #Neutrino Physics Research #Observatory #Quasar #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1674-4527/9/1/007
published in Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics 9(1), 85-94 (IOP Publishing) · corrected typos, modified the captions of figure 10 and figure 11
openalex publication_date 2009/01/01 · arxiv created 2009/12/17 · arxiv updated 2010/01/07 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Detection of γ-ray emissions from a class of active galactic nuclei (viz blazars), has been one of the important findings from the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory (CGRO). However, their γ-ray luminosity function has not been well determined. Few attempts have been made in earlier works, where BL Lacs and Flat Spectrum Radio Quasars (FSRQs) have been considered as a single source class. In this paper, we investigated the evolution and γ-ray luminosity function of FSRQs and BL Lacs separately. Our investigation indicates no evolution for BL Lacs, however FSRQs show significant evolution. Pure luminosity evolution is assumed for FSRQs and exponential and power law evolution models are examined. Due to the small number of sources, the low luminosity end index of the luminosity function for FSRQs is constrained with an upper limit. BL Lac luminosity function shows no signature of break. As a consistency check, the model source distributions derived from these luminosity functions show no significant departure from the observed source distributions.