Why are some BL Lacs detected by \fermi, but others not ?

Abstract

By cross-correlating an archival sample of 170 BL Lacs with 2 year \fermilat AGN sample, we have compiled a sample of 100 BL Lacs with \fermi detection (FBLs), and a sample of 70 non-\fermi BL Lacs (NFBLs). We compared various parameters of FBLs with those of NFBLs, including the redshift, the low frequency radio luminosity at 408 MHz ($L_{\rm 408MHz}$), the absolute magnitude of host galaxies ($M_{\rm host}$), the polarization fraction from NVSS survey ($P_{\rm NVSS}$), the observed arcsecond scale radio core flux at 5 GHz ($F_{\rm core}$) and jet Doppler factor; all the parameters are directly \textbf{measured} or derived from available data from literatures. We found that the Doppler factor is on average larger in FBLs than in NFBLs, and the $Fermi~ \gamma$-ray detection rate is higher in sources with higher Doppler factor. In contrast, there are no significant differences in terms of the intrinsic parameters of redshift, $ L_{\rm 408MHz}$, $ M_{\rm host}$ and $ P_{\rm NVSS}$. FBLs seem to have a higher probability of exhibiting measurable proper motion. These results strongly indicate a higher beaming effect in FBLs compared to NFBLs. The radio core flux is found to be strongly correlated with $\gamma$-ray flux, which remains after excluding the common dependence of the Doppler factor. At the fixed Doppler factor, FBLs have systematically larger radio core flux than NFBLs, implying lower $\gamma$-ray emission in NFBLs since the radio and $\gamma$-ray flux are significantly correlated. Our results indicate that the Doppler factor is an important parameter of $\gamma$-ray detection, the non-detection of $\gamma$-ray emission in NFBLs is likely due to low beaming effect, and/or low intrinsic $\gamma$-ray flux, and the gamma-rays are likely produced co-spatially with the arcsecond-scale radio core radiation and mainly through the SSC process.