The Physical Properties of Changing-look Blazars

Abstract

Changing-look active galactic nuclei (AGNs) are a special class of AGNs that change their spectral type from type 1 to type 2 or vice versa. In recent years, a number of changing-look blazars (CLBs) were also reported, which transition between flat-spectrum radio quasars and BL Lacs. The physical properties of CLBs are still unclear. Using the mclust R package for Gaussian mixture modeling, we performed a clustering analysis for a sample of 105 CLBs selected from the literature. Three kinds of analysis found that CLBs lie in between the parameter distributions of FSRQs and BL Lacs: (i) univariate analysis; (ii) bivariate analysis; and (iii) multivariate analysis, carried out with a dimension reduction approach of the physical properties of the three types of blazars. Our results suggest that CLBs belong to a transition type between FSRQs and BL Lacs, which may be regulated by the change of accretion process and may be similar to other changing-look AGNs.

Keywords

• Active galactic nuclei
• Blazars
• BL Lacertae objects
• Flat-spectrum radio quasars