Variability and Velocity of Superluminal Sources

Abstract

We investigate the relation between the Doppler factor determined from variations in total flux at 22 and 37 GHz, and the apparent transverse velocity determined from VLBA observations at 2 cm. The data are consistent with the relativistic beaming theory for compact radio sources, in that the distribution of beta_{app}/delta_{var}, for 30 quasars, is roughly consistent with a Monte Carlo simulation. The intrinsic temperature appears to be ~2x10^{10} K, close to the "equipartition value" calculated by Readhead (1994). We deduce the distribution of Lorentz factors for a group of 48 sources; the values range up to about gamma=40.