The Relativistic Jet-accretion Flow-wind Connection in Mrk 231
Abstract
Long-term radio monitoring of the broad absorption line (BAL) quasar Mrk 231 at 17.6 GHz detected a strong flare in 2015. This triggered four epochs of Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) observations from 8.4 to 43 GHz as well as three epochs of X-ray observations with NuSTAR and two with XMM over a 15 week period. Two ejected components were detected by the VLBA observations. A conservative lower bound on the apparent speed of the first ejection is attained by assuming that it was ejected when the flare began, ν_(app) > 3.15c. Serendipitous far-UV Hubble Space Telescopeobservations combined with our long-term radio monitoring seem to indicate that episodes of relativistic ejections suppress flux that is emitted at wavelengths shortward of the peak of the far-UV spectral energy distribution, similar to what has been observed in radio-loud quasars. Episodes of strong jet production also seem to suppress the high-ionization BAL wind seen in weak jet states. We found a statistically significant increase (~25%) of the 3–12 keV flux during the radio flare relative to a quiescent radio state. This is explained by an ultra-fast (~0.06c) X-ray-absorbing photoionized wind that is significantly detected only in the low-radio state (similar to Galactic black holes). Mrk 231 is becoming more radio loud. We found that the putative parsec-scale radio lobe doubled in brightness in nine years. Furthermore, large flares are more frequent, with three major flares occurring at ~2 year intervals.
Additional Information
© 2017 The American Astronomical Society. Received 2016 September 15; revised 2016 December 28; accepted 2016 December 28; published 2017 February 16. This research made use of data obtained with NuSTAR, a project led by Caltech, funded by NASA and managed by NASA/JPL, and utilized the NUSTARDAS software package, jointly developed by the ASDC (Italy) and Caltech (USA). We also made use of data obtained with XMM-Newton, an ESA science mission with instruments and contributions directly funded by ESA Member States. This work made use of Director's Discretionary Time on both NuSTAR and XMMNewton for which we thank Fiona Harrison and Norbert Schartel for approving, as well as the NuSTAR and XMMNewton SOC for implementing and coordinating the observations. We would like to thank S. Veilleux and M. Melendez for sharing their G130M data. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. This research has made use of NASA's Astrophysics Data System Bibliographic Services. This work made use of the Swinburne University of Technology software correlator, developed as part of the Australian Major National Research Facilities Programme and operated under licence.Attached Files
Submitted - 1701.03190v1.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 73497
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20170113-142207861
- Created
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2017-01-17Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-11Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- NuSTAR