1. Radio-Optical Study of Double-Peaked AGNs: 3C 390.3
J. León-Tavares 1,2, Andrei Lobanov 2, Vahram Chavushyan1, Tigran Arshakian2,
Alla Shapovalova3 & Alexander Burenkov3
1 Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Optica y Electrónica (INAOE), Puebla, México
2 Max Planck Institute fur Radioastronomie (MPifR), Bonn, Germany
3 Special Astrophysic Observatory (SAO RAS), Nizhnij Arkhyz Russia
What is a Double-Peaked AGN?
Inner Jet -- Optical emission
Among the variety of types and species in the AGN “zoo”, there is a small fraction of AGN showing unusually broad and double-peaked (DP) profiles of the Balmer and Mg II emission lines. The widths of the DP profiles range from several thousands to about km s-1 for the broadest detection. Around 150 DP AGN are known at present.
DP Balmer lines, optical continuum and parsec-scale radio emission have been monitored for 3C since 1991 until 2007 (Zheng et al. 1991; Shapovalova et al. 2001; Kellermann et al. 2004; Gezari et al. 2007, Shapovalova et al. in prep).
We have measured flux densities of all of the VLBI jet components and used back-extrapolation of linear fits to the component trajectories to calculate the epochs of ejection from the nucleus (D) and the epochs of passage through the closest stationary feature S1
26,000 km s-1
Black Hole
Accretion Disk
Jet Ha D S1
Figure 2. Left panel. Compact radio structure of 3C390.3 at 15 GHz observed in October 2006 with VLBA. The compact jet can be modeled by circular gaussian components , D at r=0 mas, S1 at r=0.3 mas and S2 at r=1.4 mas are stationary , while the other features are moving. We have used 19 epoch of observations extracted from the MOJAVE/2cm Survey , NRAO data Archive and our VLBA observations.
Figure 1. (Left) Cartoon for the LINER NGC showing the accretion geometry proposed in order to exhibit double-peaked emission lines (credits of image T. Storchi-Bergman). (Right). Optical spectra for the extreme DP AGN SDSS J which Ha Balmer emission line profile is very broad (FWHM ~ 26,000 km s-1) and double peaked . The starlight (blue-line) and nuclear continuum (red-line) are also shown.
Corona
BLR-1 (disk)
Subrelativistic outflow
VLBI “core”
BLR-2 (outflow)
Relativistic jet S1 D
Figure 3 (Left) Variability light curves, from top to bottom Flux Hb, continuum flux at 5100 Å in relative units. Flux density variation for jet components D and S1. Ejection times from the component D (open triangles) and passing times trough component S1 (filled triangles).
(Right). A scheme that can be suggested to explain the basic properties of the optical emission and line emission
Results
Arshakian et al. (2006) using 6 years (95-01) of radio-optical observations found: that: the optical continuum shows a correlation with the flux density of the stationary feature S1 at high confidence level. Flux density variations of S1 and D (core) features show anticorrelation.
And suggested two component structure for BLR: BLR-1 ionized by the corona or disk (D) and is evident around the epochs of minima in the cont. flux (the jet contribution is small). BLR-2 ionized by the non-thermal emission from the relativistic jet near the VLBI base of the jet at a distance of ~ 0.4 pc from the central BH. The contribution may be manifested when the jet emission dominates the optical continuum (see Figure. 3 right panel).
New radio-optical observations spanning 13 years confirm the optical continuum-inner jet correlation founded by Arshakian et al. (2006). As well the flux density variability anticorrelated between components D and S1 in the radio jet (see Figure. 3 left panel).
We identified 8 (3 newly) components (C4 – C11) in the inner jet. The epochs of passage of components C5-C11 through S1 (filled triangles) coincide with the maxima in the optical continuum and H light curves. The null hypothesis that this happens by chance is rejected at high confidence level.
This correlations imply strongly that the jet emission from S1 is the main source of the optical continuum driving the double-peaked emission in 3C
References
To further test the model we have identified a representative sample of 9 bright, nearby galaxies that show double-peaked and single-peaked broad-line profiles variability of the Balmer line profiles is being monitored with two 2.1-m instruments of GHAO and OAN-SPM (Mexico) and with the 6-m and 1-m telescopes of SAO (Nizhnij Arkhyz, Russia), This objects have been monitored with VLBA and EVN.
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