AGN radio observations at the Fermi era

Séminaire IPAG de Eduardo Ros (University of Valencia), jeudi 24 novembre 2011 à 11h00, IRAM seminar room

The gamma and radio extragalactic radio skies are dominated by blazars, active galactic nuclei with beamed relativistic jets oriented towards the observer. Those objects are being probed by the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope, and due to their high brightness temperatures, their jets can be also monitored and explored at parsec-scales via Very-Long-Baseline Interferometry. This is complemented by single-dish studies of their radio light curves from millimetre to decimetre wavelenghts, as well as by the study of the spectral energy distribution from radio to very-high-energy gamma rays. I will give an overview of the observational efforts to study parsec-scale radio jets and the connection towards the gamma-rays, and how those shed light into open questions such as the location of the high-energy emission, the mechanisms of emission involved.