MOJAVE. XIII. PARSEC-SCALE AGN JET KINEMATICS ANALYSIS BASED ON 19 YEARS OF VLBA OBSERVATIONS AT 15 GHz

By M. Lister, M. Aller, H. Aller, D. Homan, K. Kellermann, Y. Kovalev, A. Pushkarev, J. Richards, E. Ros, T. Savolainen. 2016

204 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present 1625 new 15 GHz (2 cm) VLBA images of 295 jets associated with active galactic nuclei (AGNs) from the MOJAVE and 2 cm VLBA surveys, spanning observations between 1994 August 31 and 2013 August 20. For 274 AGNs with at least 5 VLBA epochs, we have analyzed the kinematics of 961 individual bright features in their parsec-scale jets. A total of 122 of these jets have not been previously analyzed by the MOJAVE program. In the case of 451 jet features that had at least 10 epochs, we also examined their kinematics for possible accelerations. At least half of the well-sampled features have non-radial and/or accelerating trajectories, indicating that non-ballistic motion is common in AGN jets. Since it is impossible to extrapolate any accelerations that occurred before our monitoring period, we could only determine reliable ejection dates for of those features that had significant proper motions. The distribution of maximum apparent jet speeds in all 295 AGNs measured by our program to date is peaked below , with very few jets with apparent speeds above . The fastest speed in our survey is , measured in the jet of the quasar PKS 0805−07, and is indicative of a maximum jet Lorentz factor of ∼50 in the parent population. An envelope in the maximum jet speed versus redshift distribution of our sample provides additional evidence of this upper limit to the speeds of radio-emitting regions in parsec-scale AGN jets. The Fermi-LAT-detected gamma-ray AGNs in our sample have, on average, higher jet speeds than non-LAT-detected AGNs, indicating a strong correlation between parsec-scale jet speed and the gamma-ray Doppler boosting factor. We have identified 11 moderate-redshift ( ) AGNs with fast apparent speeds ( ) that are strong candidates for future TeV gamma-ray detection. Of the five gamma-ray loud narrow-lined Seyfert I AGNs in our sample, three show highly superluminal jet motions, while the others have sub-luminal speeds. This indicates that some narrow-lined Seyfert I AGNs possess powerful jets with Lorentz factors in excess of 10, and viewing angles less than , consistent with those of typical BL Lac objects and flat-spectrum radio quasars.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/83c4481388320dd84f02ed2cfab2011e8f6567bd

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Y. Kovalev
2. M. Lister
3. T. Savolainen
4. A. Marscher
5. A. Pushkarev
6. D. Homan
7. M. Tornikoski
8. A. Lähteenmäki

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. M. Lister
2. Y. Kovalev
3. T. Savolainen
4. A. Marscher
5. A. Pushkarev
6. D. Homan
7. A. Lähteenmäki
8. M. Tornikoski

Citations in the corpus

• Kinematics of Parsec-scale Jets of Gamma-Ray Blazars at 43 GHz within the VLBA-BU-BLAZAR Program (2017, methodology): “Analysis of parsec-scale jet behavior at longer wavelengths during the same period of time can be found in Britzen et al. (2013); Lister et al. (2013, 2016).”
• Formation of precessing jets by tilted black hole discs in 3D general relativistic MHD simulations (2017, background): “Disc tilt has been invoked to explain quasiperiodic oscillations (QPOs) in BH systems (Stella & Vietri 1998; Ingram, Done & Fragile 2009) and variability in the jet orientation (Agudo et al. 2012; Stone & Loeb 2012; Lister et al. 2013, 2016; Tchekhovskoy et al. 2014).”
• MOJAVE. XV. VLBA 15 GHz Total Intensity and Polarization Maps of 437 Parsec-scale AGN Jets from 1996 to 2017 (2017, background): “More details on individual objects and their total intensity evolution can be found in other papers in this series (e.g., Lister et al. 2013, 2016).”