Subjects: Astronomy >> Astrophysical processes submitted time 2023-02-19
Hiroki Okino
Kazunori Akiyama
Keiichi Asada
José L. Gómez
Kazuhiro Hada
Mareki Honma
Thomas P. Krichbaum
Motoki Kino
Hiroshi Nagai
Uwe Bach
Lindy Blackburn
Katherine L. Bouman
Andrew Chael
Geoffrey B. Crew
Sheperd S. Doeleman
Vincent L. Fish
Ciriaco Goddi
Sara Issaoun
Michael D. Johnson
Svetlana Jorstad
Abstract： The collimation of relativistic jets launched from the vicinity of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at the centers of active galactic nuclei (AGN) 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 $\sim$60 ${\rm \mu}$as, resolving the innermost part of the jet ever on scales of $\sim 10^5$ 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 AGN. We discovered the jet collimation break around $10^{7}$ 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 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.
Peer Review Status:
Awaiting Review
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