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Description
We present the results from the first large (>100 sources) 3.5mm polarimetric survey of radio-loud active galactic nuclei (AGNs). This wavelength is favorable within the radio-millimeter range for measuring the intrinsic linearly polarized emission from AGNs, since in general it is only marginally affected by Faraday rotation of the electric vector position angle and depolarization. The I, Q, U, and V Stokes parameter observations were performed with the XPOL polarimeter at the IRAM 30m Telescope on different observing epochs from 2005 July (when most of the measurements were made) to 2009 October. Our sample consists of 145 flat-radio-spectrum AGNs with declination >-30{deg} (J2000.0) and flux density >~1Jy at ~86GHz, as measured at the IRAM 30m Telescope from 1978 to 1994. This constraint on the radio spectrum causes our sample to be dominated by blazars, which allows us to conduct new statistical studies on this class of high-luminosity, relativistically beamed emitters. Over our entire source sample, the luminosity of the jets is anticorrelated with the degree of linear polarization. Consistent with previous findings claiming larger Doppler factors for brighter {gamma}-ray blazars, quasars listed in our sample, and in the Fermi Large Area Telescope Bright Source Catalog (LBAS, Abdo et al., 2009ApJ...700..597A), show larger luminosities than non-LBAS ones, but our data do not allow us to confirm the same for BL Lac objects. Our new data can be used to estimate the 3.5mm AGN contribution to measurements of the linear polarization of the cosmic microwave background, such as those performed by the Planck satellite.
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