We present the results from a multiwavelength campaign conducted in 2006 August of the powerful unk-ray quasar PKS 1510-089 (z = 0.361). This campaign commenced with a deep Suzaku observation lasting ...3 days for a total exposure time of 120 ks and continued with Swift monitoring over 18 days. Besides Swift observations, the campaign included ground-based optical and radio data and yielded a quasi-simultaneous broadband spectrum from 10 super(9) to 10 super(19) Hz. The Suzaku observation provided a high signal-to-noise ratio X-ray spectrum, which is well represented by an extremely hard power law with a photon index of Gamma unk 1.2, augmented by a soft component apparent below 1 keV, which is well described by a blackbody model with a temperature of kT unk 0.2 keV. Monitoring by Suzaku revealed temporal variability that differs between the low- and high-energy bands, again suggesting the presence of a second, variable component in addition to the primary power-law emission. We model the broadband spectrum, assuming that the high-energy spectral component results from Comptonization of infrared radiation produced by hot dust located in the surrounding molecular torus. The adopted internal shock scenario implies that the power of the jet is dominated by protons, but with a number of electrons and/or positrons that exceeds the number of protons by a factor of similar to 10. We also find that inhomogeneities responsible for the shock formation prior to the collision may produce bulk Compton radiation, which can explain the observed soft X-ray excess and possible excess at similar to 18 keV. We note, however, that the bulk Compton interpretation is not unique, as discussed briefly in the text.
Observational information on high-energy astrophysical neutrinos is being continuously collected by the IceCube observatory. However, the sources of the neutrinos are still unknown. In this study, we ...use radio very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) data for a complete VLBI flux density-limited sample of active galactic nuclei (AGNs). We address the problem of the origin of astrophysical neutrinos with energies above 200 TeV in a statistical manner. It is found that AGNs positionally associated with IceCube events have typically stronger parsec-scale cores than the rest of the sample. The posttrial probability of a chance coincidence is 0.2%. We select the four strongest AGNs as highly probable associations: 3C 279, NRAO 530, PKS 1741−038, and OR 103. Moreover, we find an increase of radio emission at frequencies above 10 GHz around neutrino arrival times for several other VLBI-selected AGNs on the basis of RATAN-600 monitoring. The most pronounced example of such behavior is PKS 1502+106. We conclude that AGNs with bright Doppler-boosted jets constitute an important population of neutrino sources. High-energy neutrinos are produced in their central parsec-scale regions, probably in proton-photon interactions at or around the accretion disk. Radio-bright AGNs that are likely associated with neutrinos have very diverse γ-ray properties, suggesting that γ-rays and neutrinos may be produced in different regions of AGNs and not directly related. A small viewing angle of the jet-disk axis is, however, required to detect either of them.
Context. Understanding the mechanisms that launch and shape powerful relativistic jets from supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in high-redshift active galactic nuclei (AGNs) is crucial for probing the ...co-evolution of SMBHs and galaxies over cosmic time. Aims. We focus on the high-redshift ( z = 3.396) blazar OH 471 to explore the jet launching mechanism in the early Universe. Methods. Using multi-frequency radio monitoring observations and high-resolution Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) imaging over three decades, we studied the milliarcsecond structure and long-term variability of OH 471. Results. Our spectral modeling of the radio flux densities revealed a synchrotron self-absorbed spectrum, indicating strong magnetic fields within the compact core. By applying the flux freezing approximation, we estimated the magnetic flux carried by the jet. We found that it reaches or exceeds theoretical predictions for jets powered by black hole spin energy via the Blandford-Znajek mechanism. This implies that OH 471 is in a magnetically arrested disk (MAD) state, where the magnetic flux accumulated near the horizon regulates the accretion flow, allowing for an efficient extraction of black hole rotational energy. Conclusions. Our study demonstrates the dominance of MAD accretion in powering the prominent radio flares and relativistic jets observed in the radio-loud AGN named OH 471. Statistical studies of larger samples of high-redshift AGNs will shed light on the role of MAD accretion in launching and accelerating the earliest relativistic jets.
Recently we have shown that high-energy neutrinos above 200 TeV detected by IceCube are produced within several parsecs in the central regions of radio-bright blazars, that is active galactic nuclei ...with jets pointing toward us. To independently test this result and extend the analysis to a wider energy range, we use public data for all neutrino energies from seven years of IceCube observations. The IceCube point-source likelihood map is analyzed against the positions of blazars from a statistically complete sample selected according to their compact radio flux density. The latter analysis delivers a 3.0 significance, with the combined post-trial significance of both studies being 4.1 . The correlation is driven by a large number of blazars. Together with fainter but physically similar sources not included in the sample, they may explain the entire IceCube astrophysical neutrino flux as derived from muon-track analyses. The neutrinos can be produced in interactions of relativistic protons with X-ray self-Compton photons in parsec-scale blazar jets.
Abstract
The apparent position of jet base (core) in radio-loud active galactic nuclei changes with frequency because of synchrotron self-absorption. Studying this ‘core shift’ effect enables us to ...reconstruct properties of the jet regions close to the central engine. We report here results from core shift measurements in AGNs observed with global VLBI at 2 and 8 GHz at epochs from 1994 to 2016. Our sample contains 40 objects observed at least 10 times during that period. The core shift is determined using a new automatic procedure introduced to minimize possible biases. The resulting multiple epoch measurements of the core position are employed for examining temporal variability of the core shift. We argue that the core shift variability is a common phenomenon, as established for 33 of 40 AGNs we study. Our analysis shows that the typical offsets between the core positions at 2 and 8 GHz are about 0.5 mas and they vary in time. Typical variability of the individual core positions is about 0.3 mas. The measurements show a strong dependence between the core position and its flux density, suggesting that changes in both are likely related to the nuclear flares injecting denser plasma into the flow. We determine that density of emitting relativistic particles significantly increases during these flares, while relative magnetic field changes less and in the opposite direction.
We observed with the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) at 2.3 and 8.6 GHz a complete flux-density-limited sample of 482 radio sources with decl. > +75° brighter than 200 mJy at 1.4 GHz drawn from the ...NVSS catalog. A total of 34% of the sources show parsec-scale emission above the flux density detection limit of 30 mJy; their accurate positions and parsec-scale structure parameters are determined. Among all the sources detected at least at the shortest VLBA baselines, the majority, or 72%, have a steep single-dish spectrum. The fraction of the sources with a detectable parsec-scale structure is above 95% among the flat-spectrum objects and close to 25% among the steep-spectrum objects. We identified 82 compact steep-spectrum source candidates, which make up 17% of the sample; most of them are reported for the first time. The compactness and the brightness temperature of the sources in our sample show a positive correlation with single-dish and VLBA spectral indices. All the sources with a significant 8 GHz variability were detected by the VLBA snapshot observations, which independently confirmed their compactness. We demonstrated that 54% of the sources detected by the VLBA at 2.3 GHz in our sample have a steep VLBA spectrum. The compact radio emission of these sources is likely dominated by optically thin jets or mini-lobes, not by an opaque jet core. These results show that future VLBI surveys aimed at searching for new sources with parsec-scale structure should include not only flat-spectrum sources but also steep-spectrum ones in order to reach an acceptable level of completeness.
We have measured the angular sizes of radio cores of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and analysed their sky distributions and frequency dependences to study synchrotron opacity in AGN jets and the ...strength of angular broadening in the interstellar medium. We have used archival very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) data of more than 3000 compact extragalactic radio sources observed at frequencies, ν, from 2 to 43 GHz to measure the observed angular size of VLBI cores. We have found a significant increase in the angular sizes of the extragalactic sources seen through the Galactic plane (|b| ≲ 10°) at 2, 5 and 8 GHz, about one-third of which show significant scattering. These sources are mainly detected in directions to the Galactic bar, the Cygnus region and a region with galactic longitudes 220° ≲ l ≲ 260° (the Fitzgerald window). The strength of interstellar scattering of the AGNs is found to correlate with the Galactic Hα intensity, free-electron density and Galactic rotation measure. The dependence of scattering strengths on source redshift is insignificant, suggesting that the dominant scattering screens are located in our Galaxy. The observed angular size of Sgr A* is found to be the largest among thousands of AGNs observed over the sky; we discuss possible reasons for this strange result. Excluding extragalactic radio sources with significant scattering, we find that the angular size of opaque cores in AGNs scales typically as ν−1, confirming predictions of a conical synchrotron jet model with equipartition.
Abstract
We interpret the recent discovery of a preferred very long baseline interferometry (VLBI)/Gaia offset direction for radio-loud active galactic nuclei (AGNs) along pc-scale radio jets as a ...manifestation of their optical structure on scales of 1–100 milliarcsec (mas). The extended jet structure affects the Gaia position more strongly than the VLBI position, due to the difference in observing techniques. Gaia detects total power, while VLBI measures a correlated quantity, visibility, and is therefore sensitive to compact structures. The synergy of VLBI, which is sensitive to the position of the most compact source component, usually associated with the opaque radio core, and Gaia, which is sensitive to the centroid of optical emission, opens a window of opportunity to study optical jets at milliarcsec resolution, two orders of magnitude finer than the resolution of most existing optical instruments. We demonstrate that strong variability of optical jets is able to cause a jitter comparable to the VLBI/Gaia offsets in a quiet state, i.e. several mas. We show that the VLBI/Gaia position jitter correlation with the AGN optical light curve may help to locate the region where a flare has occurred and estimate its distance from the supermassive black hole and the ratio of the flux density in the flaring region to the total flux density.
We present results from a parsec-scale jet kinematics study of 409 bright radio-loud active galactic nuclei (AGNs) based on 15 GHz Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) data obtained between 1994 August 31 ...and 2016 December 26 as part of the 2 cm VLBA survey and Monitoring Of Jets in Active galactic nuclei with VLBA Experiments (MOJAVE) programs. We tracked 1744 individual bright features in 382 jets over at least 5 epochs. A majority (59%) of the best-sampled jet features showed evidence of accelerated motion at the >3 level. Although most features within a jet typically have speeds within ∼40% of a characteristic median value, we identified 55 features in 42 jets that had unusually slow pattern speeds, nearly all of which lie within 4 pc (100 pc deprojected) of the core feature. Our results, combined with other speeds from the literature, indicate a strong correlation between apparent jet speed and synchrotron peak frequency, with the highest jet speeds being found only in low-peaked AGNs. Using Monte Carlo simulations, we find best-fit parent population parameters for a complete sample of 174 quasars above 1.5 Jy at 15 GHz. Acceptable fits are found with a jet population that has a simple unbeamed power-law luminosity function incorporating pure luminosity evolution and a power-law Lorentz factor distribution ranging from 1.25 to 50 with slope −1.4 0.2. The parent jets of the brightest radio quasars have a space density of 261 19 Gpc−3 and unbeamed 15 GHz luminosities above ∼1024.5 W Hz−1, consistent with FR II class radio galaxies.
We present 5321 mas-resolution total intensity and linear polarization maps of 437 active galactic nuclei (AGNs) obtained with the VLBA at 15 GHz as part of the MOJAVE survey, and also from the NRAO ...data archive. The former is a long-term program to study the structure and evolution of powerful parsec-scale outflows associated with AGNs. The targeted AGNs are drawn from several flux-limited radio and γ-ray samples, and all have correlated VLBA flux densities greater than ∼50 mJy at 15 GHz. Approximately 80% of these AGNs are associated with γ-ray sources detected by the Fermi LAT instrument. The vast majority were observed with the VLBA on 5-15 occasions between 1996 January 19 and 2016 December 26, at intervals ranging from a month to several years, with the most typical sampling interval being six months. A detailed analysis of the linear and circular polarization evolutions of these AGN jets is presented in the other papers in this series.
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