English

A persistent double nuclear structure in 3C 84

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2021-11-17 v1 High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena

Abstract

3C 84 (NGC 1275) is the radio source at the center of the Perseus Cluster and exhibits a bright radio jet. We observed the source with the Global Millimeter VLBI Array (GMVA) between 2008 and 2015, with a typical angular resolution of \sim50 μ\muas. The observations revealed a consistent double nuclear structure separated by \sim770 gravitational radii assuming a Black Hole mass of 3.2 ×108\times 10^{8} MM_{\odot}. The region is likely too broad and bright to be the true jet base anchored in the accretion disk or Black Hole ergosphere. A cone and parabola were fit to the stacked (time averaged) image of the nuclear region. The data did not strongly prefer either fit, but combined with a jet/counter-jet ratio analysis, an upper limit on the viewing angle to the inner jet region of \leq35^{\circ} was found. This provides evidence for a variation of the viewing angle along the jet (and therefore a bent jet) within \sim0.5 parsec of the jet launching region. In the case of a conical jet, the apex is located \sim2400 gravitational radii upstream of the bright nuclear region and up to \sim600 gravitational radii upstream in the parabolic case. We found a possible correlation between the brightness temperature and relative position angle of the double nuclear components, which may indicate rotation within the jet.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2110.09811,
  title  = {A persistent double nuclear structure in 3C 84},
  author = {Junghwan Oh and Jeffrey A. Hodgson and Sascha Trippe and Thomas P. Krichbaum and Minchul Kam and Georgios Filippos Paraschos and Jae-Young Kim and Bindu Rani and Bong Won Sohn and Sang-Sung Lee and Rocco Lico and Elisabetta Liuzzo and Michael Bremer and Anton Zensus},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2110.09811},
  year   = {2021}
}
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