Collimation of the Relativistic Jet in the Quasar 3C 273

Creators: Okino, Hiroki; Akiyama, Kazunori; Asada, Keiichi; Gómez, José L.; Hada, Kazuhiro; Honma, Mareki; Krichbaum, Thomas P.; Kino, Motoki; Nagai, Hiroshi; Bach, Uwe; Blackburn, Lindy; Bouman, Katherine L.; Chael, Andrew; Crew, Geoffrey B.; Doeleman, Sheperd S.; Fish, Vincent L.; Goddi, Ciriaco; Issaoun, Sara; Johnson, Michael D.; Jorstad, Svetlana; Koyama, Shoko; Lonsdale, Colin J.; Lu, Ru-Sen; Martí-Vidal, Ivan; Matthews, Lynn D.; Mizuno, Yosuke; Moriyama, Kotaro; Nakamura, Masanori; Pu, Hung-Yi; Ros, Eduardo; Savolainen, Tuomas; Tazaki, Fumie; Wagner, Jan; Wielgus, Maciek; Zensus, Anton

Abstract

The collimation of relativistic jets launched from the vicinity of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at the centers of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) is one of the key questions to understand the nature of AGN jets. However, little is known about the detailed jet structure for AGN like quasars since very high angular resolutions are required to resolve these objects. We present very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) observations of the archetypical quasar 3C 273 at 86 GHz, performed with the Global Millimeter VLBI Array, for the first time including the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array. Our observations achieve a high angular resolution down to ∼60 μas, resolving the innermost part of the jet ever on scales of ∼10⁵ Schwarzschild radii. Our observations, including close-in-time High Sensitivity Array observations of 3C 273 at 15, 22, and 43 GHz, suggest that the inner jet collimates parabolically, while the outer jet expands conically, similar to jets from other nearby low-luminosity AGNs. We discovered the jet collimation break around 10⁷ Schwarzschild radii, providing the first compelling evidence for structural transition in a quasar jet. The location of the collimation break for 3C 273 is farther downstream from the sphere of gravitational influence (SGI) from the central SMBH. With the results for other AGN jets, our results show that the end of the collimation zone in AGN jets is governed not only by the SGI of the SMBH but also by the more diverse properties of the central nuclei.

Additional Information

We thank the anonymous referee for many helpful and constructive suggestions to improve this paper during the review stage. This work was financially supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF; AST-1440254; AST-1614868; AST-2034306) and the Japan Society for Promotion of Science (JSPS; JP21H01137; JP20H01951; JP19KK0081; JP18H03721.). This work has been partially supported by the Generalitat Valenciana GenT Project CIDEGENT/2018/021 and by the MICINN Research Project PID2019-108995GB-C22. This work was partially supported by FAPESP (Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo) under grant 2021/01183-8. K. Akiyama is also financially supported by the following NSF grants (AST-1935980, AST-2107681, AST-2132700, OMA-2029670). A.C. was supported by Hubble Fellowship grant HST-HF2-51431.001-A awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., for NASA, under contract NAS5-26555. A.C. also gratefully acknowledges support from the Princeton Gravity Initiative. S.I. is supported by NASA Hubble Fellowship grant HST-HF2-51482.001-A awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., for NASA, under contract NAS5-26555. R.-S. L. is supported by the Max Planck Partner Group of the MPG and the CAS and acknowledges support by the Key Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant No. 11933007), the Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences, CAS (grant No. ZDBS-LY-SLH011), and the Shanghai Pilot Program for Basic Research—Chinese Academy of Science, Shanghai Branch (JCYJ-SHFY-2022-013). Y.M. acknowledges the support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant No. 12273022). The black hole Initiative at Harvard University is financially supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. This paper makes use of the following ALMA data: ADS/JAO.ALMA2016.1.01216.V. ALMA is a partnership of ESO (representing its member states), NSF (USA), and NINS (Japan), together with NRC (Canada), MOST and ASIAA (Taiwan), and KASI (Republic of Korea), in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. The Joint ALMA Observatory is operated by ESO, AUI/NRAO and NAOJ. This research has made use of data obtained with the Global Millimeter VLBI Array (GMVA), which consists of telescopes operated by the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie (MPIfR), IRAM, Onsala, Metsahovi, Yebes, the Korean VLBI Network, the Green Bank Observatory, and the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA). The VLBA is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. The data were correlated with the DiFX correlator of the MPIfR in Bonn, Germany. This work is partly based on observations with the 100 m telescope of the MPIfR at Effelsberg. This work made use of the Swinburne University of Technology software correlator (Deller et al. 2011), developed as part of the Australian Major National Research Facilities Programme and operated under licence. This research has made use of data from the MOJAVE database that is maintained by the MOJAVE team (Lister et al. 2018). This study makes use of 43 GHz VLBA data from the VLBA-BU Blazar Monitoring Program (VLBA-BU-BLAZAR; http://www.bu.edu/blazars/VLBAproject.html), funded by NASA through the Fermi Guest Investigator Program.

Additional details

Views

Downloads

	All versions	This version
Views	0	0
Downloads	0	0
Data volume	0 Bytes	0 Bytes

More info on how stats are collected....

Resource type: Journal Article
Publisher: American Astronomical Society
Published in: Astrophysical Journal, 940(1), Art. No. 65, ISSN: 0004-637X.