On the Relativistic Beaming and Orientation Effects in Core-Dominated Quasars

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the relativistic beaming effects in a well-defined sample of core-dominated quasars using the correlation between the relative prominence of the core with respect to the extended emission (defined as the ratio of core- to lobe- flux density measured in the rest frame of the source) and the projected linear size as an indicator of relativistic beaming and source orientation. Based on the orientation-dependent relativistic beaming and unification paradigm for high luminosity sources in which the Fanaroff-Riley class-II radio galaxies form the unbeamed parent population of both the lobe- and core-dominated quasars which are expected to lie at successively smaller angles to the line of sight, we find that the flows in the cores of these core-dominated quasars are highly relativistic, with optimum bulk Lorentz factor, opt 6–16, and also highly anisotropic, with an average viewing angle, 9 –16 . Furthermore, the largest boosting occurs within a critical cone angle of 4 –10 .