Unveiling Radio Loudness in Quasars

Abstract

We present a new approach to tackle the issue of radio loudness in quasars. We constrain a (simple) prescription for the intrinsic distribution of radio-to-optical ratios by comparing properties of Monte Carlo simulated samples with those of observed optically selected quasars. We find strong evidence for a dependence of the radio luminosity on the optical one, even though with a large scatter. The intrinsic distribution of the radio-to-optical ratios shows a peak at R*{1.4} ~ 0.3, with only ~5 per cent of objects being included in a high R*{1.4} tail which identifies the radio loud regime.