PROBING THE INNER JET OF THE QUASAR PKS 1510−089 WITH MULTI-WAVEBAND MONITORING DURING STRONG GAMMA-RAY ACTIVITY

By A. Marscher, S. Jorstad, V. Larionov, M. Aller, H. Aller, A. Lähteenmäki, I. Agudo, Paul S. Smith, M. Gurwell, V. Hagen-Thorn and 22 more. 2010

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We present results from monitoring the multi-waveband flux, linear polarization, and parsec-scale structure of the quasar PKS 1510 − 089, concentrating on eight major γ-ray flares that occurred during the interval 2009.0–2009.5. The γ-ray peaks were essentially simultaneous with maxima at optical wavelengths, although the flux ratio of the two wave bands varied by an order of magnitude. The optical polarization vector rotated by 720° during a five-day period encompassing six of these flares. This culminated in a very bright, ∼1 day, optical and γ-ray flare as a bright knot of emission passed through the highest-intensity, stationary feature (the “core”) seen in 43 GHz Very Long Baseline Array images. The knot continued to propagate down the jet at an apparent speed of 22c and emit strongly at γ-ray energies as a months-long X-ray/radio outburst intensified. We interpret these events as the result of the knot following a spiral path through a mainly toroidal magnetic field pattern in the acceleration and collimation zone of the jet, after which it passes through a standing shock in the 43 GHz core and then continues downstream. In this picture, the rapid γ-ray flares result from scattering of infrared seed photons from a relatively slow sheath of the jet as well as from optical synchrotron radiation in the faster spine. The 2006–2009.7 radio and X-ray flux variations are correlated at very high significance; we conclude that the X-rays are mainly from inverse Compton scattering of infrared seed photons by 20–40 MeV electrons.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4f2d4c09cba0d1d04d91d64aa475bfe7dc64dd66

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Citations in the corpus

FLARING BEHAVIOR OF THE QUASAR 3C 454.3 ACROSS THE ELECTROMAGNETIC SPECTRUM (2010, background): “We can rule out a stochastic rotation of the position angle due to plasma turbulence (Marscher et al. 2008, 2010), given that all three events have the same sense of rotation and coincide with optical flares.”
GAMMA-RAY LIGHT CURVES AND VARIABILITY OF BRIGHT FERMI-DETECTED BLAZARS (2010, background): “…blazars also showing the most apparent violent variations on weekly timescales, during these first 11 months of Fermi survey, are FSRQs PKS 1510−08 (Marscher et al. 2010; Abdo et al. 2010i), PKS 1502+106 (Abdo et al. 2010d), 3C 454.3 (Abdo et al. 2009c), 3C 279 (Abdo et al. 2010g), PKS…”
Photopolarimetric Monitoring of Blazars in the Optical and Near-Infrared Bands with the Kanata Telescope. I. Correlations between Flux, Color, and Polarization (2011, background): “Recently, smooth rotations of optical polarization have been reported in several blazars based on long-term polarimetric observations (Marscher et al. 2008; Sasada et al. 2010; Marscher et al. 2010; Abdo et al. 2010c; Jorstad et al. 2010).”
BLAZARS AS ULTRA-HIGH-ENERGY COSMIC-RAY SOURCES: IMPLICATIONS FOR TeV GAMMA-RAY OBSERVATIONS (2011, background): “However, some recent studies based on simultaneous radio andγ-ray observations are questioning the standard idea that the blazar region is located near the AGN core (e.g., Marscher et al. 2010).”
LOCATION OF γ-RAY FLARE EMISSION IN THE JET OF THE BL LACERTAE OBJECT OJ287 MORE THAN 14 pc FROM THE CENTRAL ENGINE (2010, methodology): “Inverse-Compton scattering of dust emission predicts that the optical andγ-ray emission should vary together, since the electron energies involvedar similar (see, e.g., Marscher et al. 2010).”
Detection of significant cm to sub-mm band radio and γ-ray correlated variability in Fermi bright blazars (2014, background): “…suggest relativistic shocks, shock-shock interaction and/or multiple jet regions on pc scales as sites of the γ-ray emission (e.g. Jorstad et al. 2001; Marscher et al. 2010; Jorstad et al. 2010; Agudo et al. 2011b; Schinzel et al. 2012; Rani et al. 2013; Orienti et al. 2013; Raiteri et al. 2013).”
Kinematics of Parsec-scale Jets of Gamma-Ray Blazars at 43 GHz within the VLBA-BU-BLAZAR Program (2017, background): “…a disturbance in parsec-scale radio jets seen on VLBA images as a region of enhanced brightness moving with an apparently superluminal speed (e.g., Marscher et al. 2010; Agudo et al. 2011a; Wehrle et al. 2012; Jorstad et al. 2013a; Morozova et al. 2014; Tanaka et al. 2015; Casadio et al. 2015a),…”
TURBULENT, EXTREME MULTI-ZONE MODEL FOR SIMULATING FLUX AND POLARIZATION VARIABILITY IN BLAZARS (2013, methodology): “…in the figure by 562 THz, or 534 nm, which is within the V band) ranges from close to zero up to tens of percent for the BL Lac-like simulation and up to nearly 20% for the quasar-like simulation, similar to the observed range (see Marscher et al. 2010; Marscher 2013, to compare with data).”