FLARING BEHAVIOR OF THE QUASAR 3C 454.3 ACROSS THE ELECTROMAGNETIC SPECTRUM

By S. Jorstad, A. Marscher, V. Larionov, I. Agudo, Paul S. Smith, M. Gurwell, A. Lähteenmäki, M. Tornikoski, A. Markowitz, A. Arkharov and 22 more. 2010

159 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We analyze the behavior of the parsec-scale jet of the quasar 3C 454.3 during pronounced flaring in 2005–2008. Three major disturbances propagated down the jet along different trajectories with Lorentz factors Γ > 10. The disturbances show a clear connection with millimeter-wave outbursts, in 2005 May/June, 2007 July, and 2007 December. High-amplitude optical events in the R-band light curve precede peaks of the millimeter-wave outbursts by 15–50 days. Each optical outburst is accompanied by an increase in X-ray activity. We associate the optical outbursts with propagation of the superluminal knots and derive the location of sites of energy dissipation in the form of radiation. The most prominent and long lasting of these, in 2005 May, occurred closer to the black hole, while the outbursts with a shorter duration in 2005 autumn and in 2007 might be connected with the passage of a disturbance through the millimeter-wave core of the jet. The optical outbursts, which coincide with the passage of superluminal radio knots through the core, are accompanied by systematic rotation of the position angle of optical linear polarization. Such rotation appears to be a common feature during the early stages of flares in blazars. We find correlations between optical variations and those at X-ray and γ-ray energies. We conclude that the emergence of a superluminal knot from the core yields a series of optical and high-energy outbursts, and that the millimeter-wave core lies at the end of the jet's acceleration and collimation zone. We infer that the X-ray emission is produced via inverse Compton scattering by relativistic electrons of photons both from within the jet (synchrotron self-Compton) and external to the jet (external Compton, or EC); which one dominates depends on the physical parameters of the jet. A broken power-law model of the γ-ray spectrum reflects a steepening of the synchrotron emission spectrum from near-IR to soft UV wavelengths. We propose that the γ-ray emission is dominated by the EC mechanism, with the sheath of the jet supplying seed photons for γ-ray events that occur near the millimeter-wave core.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e6d3e421f30ca8e5fe7721334f1a21622b3631f0

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. A. Marscher
2. M. Tornikoski
3. A. Lähteenmäki
4. S. Jorstad
5. J. Gómez
6. J. Zensus
7. A. Readhead
8. H. Wiesemeyer

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. A. Marscher
2. A. Lähteenmäki
3. M. Tornikoski
4. S. Jorstad
5. J. Gómez
6. J. Zensus
7. K. Kawabata
8. Paul S. Smith

Citations in the corpus

• 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, methodology): “Here we present the evolution of the knots, including some new epochs and later data than those discussed in Jorstad et al. (2010, 2013a).”
• 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): “Jorstad et al. (2010) proposed a similar system of three conical shocks to explain the fine structure in the innermost 7 mm jet of 3C 454.3 in a feature that would be identified as the “core” at centimeter wavelengths.”
• 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).”