An X-Ray Study of Lobe-Dominated Radio-Loud Quasars with XMM-Newton

We report on our results of X-ray spectral analysis for a sample of radio-loud quasars covering a wide range of the radio core-dominance parameter,R,from core-dominated to lobe-dominated objects,using data obtained mostly with the XMM-Newton Observatory.We find that the spectral shape of the underlying power-law continuum is flat even for the lobe-dominated objects(average photon index ～ 1.5),indistinguishable from that of core-dominated quasars.For lobe-dominated objects,contribution of X-rays from the jets is expected to be very small based on previous unification schemes,more than one order of magnitude lower than the observed X-ray luminosities.Assuming that radio-loud quasars follow the same X-ray-UV/optical luminosity relation for the disk-corona emission as found for radio-quiet quasars,we estimate the X-ray flux contributed by the disk-corona component from the optical/UV continuum.We find that neither the luminosity,nor the spectral shape,of the disk-corona X-ray emission can account for the bulk of the observed X-ray properties.Thus in lobe-dominated quasars,either the disk-corona X-ray emission is much enhanced in strength and flatter in spectral shape(photon index ～1.5) compared to normal radio-quiet quasars,or their jet X-ray emission is much enhanced compared to their weak radio core-jet emission.If the latter is the case,our result may imply that the jet emission in X-rays is less Doppler beamed than that in the radio.As a demonstrating example,we test this hypothesis by using a specific model in which the X-ray jet has a larger opening angle than the radio jet.