Filamentary structures as the origin of blazar jet radio variability

Antonio Fuentes*, José L. Gómez*, José M. Martí, Manel Perucho, Guang Yao Zhao, Rocco Lico, Andrei P. Lobanov, Gabriele Bruni, Yuri Y. Kovalev, Andrew Chael, Kazunori Akiyama, Katherine L. Bouman, He Sun, Ilje Cho, Efthalia Traianou, Teresa Toscano, Rohan Dahale, Marianna Foschi, Leonid I. Gurvits, Svetlana JorstadJae Young Kim, Alan P. Marscher, Yosuke Mizuno, Eduardo Ros, Tuomas Savolainen

*Tämän työn vastaava kirjoittaja

Tutkimustuotos: LehtiartikkeliArticleScientificvertaisarvioitu

14 Sitaatiot (Scopus)

Abstrakti

Supermassive black holes at the centre of active galactic nuclei power some of the most luminous objects in the Universe. Typically, very-long-baseline interferometric observations of blazars have revealed only funnel-like morphologies with little information on the internal structure of the ejected plasma or have lacked the dynamic range to reconstruct the extended jet emission. Here we present microarcsecond-scale angular resolution images of the blazar 3C 279 obtained at 22 GHz with the space very-long-baseline interferometry mission RadioAstron, which allowed us to resolve the jet transversely and reveal several filaments produced by plasma instabilities in a kinetically dominated flow. The polarimetric properties derived from our high-angular-resolution and broad-dynamic-range images are consistent with the presence of a helical magnetic field threaded to the jet. We infer a clockwise rotation as seen in the direction of flow motion with an intrinsic helix pitch angle of ~45° and a Lorentz factor of ~13 at the time of observation. We also propose a model to explain blazar jet radio variability in which emission features travelling down the jet may manifest as a result of differential Doppler boosting within the filaments, as opposed to the standard shock-in-jet model. Characterizing such variability is particularly important given the relevance of blazar physics from cosmic particle acceleration to standard candles in cosmology.

AlkuperäiskieliEnglanti
Sivut1359-1367
Sivumäärä9
JulkaisuNature Astronomy
Vuosikerta7
Numero11
Varhainen verkossa julkaisun päivämäärä2023
DOI - pysyväislinkit
TilaJulkaistu - marrask. 2023
OKM-julkaisutyyppiA1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä

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