Jet efficiencies and black hole spins in jetted quasars

Understand

The mechanisms responsible for the production of relativistic jets from supermassive black holes (SMBHs) accreting at near-Eddington rates are not well-understood.

• Simple theoretical expectations indicate that SMBHs in quasars accrete via thin discs which should produce at most very weak jets.
• This is contradicted by observations of powerful jets in flat-spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs).
• We use gamma-ray luminosities observed with the \emph{fermi} Large Area Telescope as a proxy of the jet power for a population of 154 FSRQs.