The Connection between Radio and Gamma Ray Emission in Fermi/LAT Blazars

Fan Xu-Liang, Bai Jin-Ming, Liu Hong-Tao, Chen Liang, Liao Neng-Hui

Published 2012-05-11Version 1

We collect the 2LAC and MOJAVE quasi-simultaneous data to investigate the radio-gamma connection of blazars. The cross sample contains 166 sources. The statistic analysis based on this sample confirms positive correlations between these two bands, but the correlations become weaker as the gamma-ray energy increases. The statistic results between various parameters show negative correlations of gamma-ray photon spectral index with gamma-ray loudness for both FSRQs and BL Lacertae objects, positive correlations of gamma-ray variability index with the gamma-ray loudness for FSRQs, a negative correlation of the gamma-ray variability index with the gamma-ray photon spectral index for FSRQs, and negative correlations of gamma-ray photon spectral index with gamma-ray luminosity for FSRQs. These results suggest that the gamma-ray variability may be due to changes inside the gamma-ray emission region like the injected power, rather than changes in the photon density of the external radiation fields, and the variability amplitude tends to be larger as the gamma-rays are closer to the high energy peak of spectral energy distribution. No correlation of variability index found for BL Lacertae objects implies that variability behavior may differ below and above the peak energy.