English

Resolving Complex Inner X-ray Structure of the Gravitationaly Lensed AGN MGB2016+112

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2021-08-25 v1

Abstract

We use a Chandra X-ray observation of the gravitationally lensed system MGB2016+112 at z=3.273 to elucidate presence of at least two X-ray sources. We find that these sources are consistent with the VLBI components measured by \citet{Spingola19}, which are separated by 200\sim 200 pc. Their intrinsic 0.5 -- 7 keV source frame luminosities are 2.6×\times1043^{43} and 4.2×\times1044^{44} erg s1^{-1}. Most likely this system contains a dual active galactic nucleus (AGN), but we possibly are detecting an AGN plus a pc-scale X-ray jet, the latter lying in a region at very high magnification. The quadruply lensed X-ray source is within ±\pm40 pc (1σ\sigma) of its VLBI counterpart. Using a gravitational lens as a telescope, and a novel statistical application, we have achieved unprecedented accuracy for measuring metric distances at such large redshifts in X-ray astronomy, which is tens of mas if the source is located close to the caustics, while it is of hundreds of mas if the source is in a region at lower amplification. The present demonstration of this approach has implications for future X-ray investigations of large numbers of lensed systems.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2103.08537,
  title  = {Resolving Complex Inner X-ray Structure of the Gravitationaly Lensed AGN MGB2016+112},
  author = {Daniel Schwartz and Cristiana Spingola and Anna Barnacka},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2103.08537},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

9 pages, 5 figures, submitted to ApJ