Title: A New Class of Active Galaxy:  Testing the formation of jets with gamma-ray bright Narrow Line Seyfert 1’s

Abstract:

The Fermi spacecraft has discovered gamma-ray emission from several Narrow Line Seyfert 1 galaxies (NLS1). It appears that these galaxies have relativistic jets similar to blazars, which poses an intriguing puzzle, for NLS1’s are thought to have central black holes that are too small to produce the kind of jets blazars have.  The host galaxies of the two populations are also believed to be different:  while most radio-loud quasars, including blazars, have elliptical host galaxies, most Seyferts (including NLS1’s) are in spirals.  These gamma-ray emitting NLS1 galaxies represent emerging evidence of a new population of (possibly spiral-hosted) radio-loud AGN with powerful jets and relativistic beaming, separate from the traditional radio galaxies residing in ellipticals.