CONNECTION BETWEEN THE ACCRETION DISK AND JET IN THE RADIO GALAXY 3C 111

Journal Article · Fri Jun 10 00:00:00 EDT 2011 · Astrophysical Journal

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/734/1/43· OSTI ID:21576672

Chatterjee, Ritaban ^[1]; Marscher, Alan P; Jorstad, Svetlana G; Harrison, Brandon; Agudo, Ivan; Taylor, Brian W ^[2]; Markowitz, Alex; Rivers, Elizabeth; Rothschild, Richard E ^[3]; McHardy, Ian M ^[4]; Aller, Margo F; Aller, Hugh D ^[5]; Laehteenmaeki, Anne; Tornikoski, Merja ^[6]; Gomez, Jose L ^[7]; Gurwell, Mark ^[8]

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1. Department of Astronomy, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520-8101 (United States)
2. Institute for Astrophysical Research, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215 (United States)
3. Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0424 (United States)
4. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Southampton, Southampton, SO17 1BJ (United Kingdom)
5. Astronomy Department, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1042 (United States)
6. Aalto University, Metsaehovi Radio Observatory, FIN-02540, Kylmaelae (Finland)
7. Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia, CSIC, 18080 Granada (Spain)
8. Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA 02138 (United States)

We present the results of extensive multi-frequency monitoring of the radio galaxy 3C 111 between 2004 and 2010 at X-ray (2.4-10 keV), optical (R band), and radio (14.5, 37, and 230 GHz) wave bands, as well as multi-epoch imaging with the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) at 43 GHz. Over the six years of observation, significant dips in the X-ray light curve are followed by ejections of bright superluminal knots in the VLBA images. This shows a clear connection between the radiative state near the black hole, where the X-rays are produced, and events in the jet. The X-ray continuum flux and Fe line intensity are strongly correlated, with a time lag shorter than 90 days and consistent with zero. This implies that the Fe line is generated within 90 lt-day of the source of the X-ray continuum. The power spectral density function of X-ray variations contains a break, with a steeper slope at shorter timescales. The break timescale of 13{sup +12}{sub -6} days is commensurate with scaling according to the mass of the central black hole based on observations of Seyfert galaxies and black hole X-ray binaries (BHXRBs). The data are consistent with the standard paradigm, in which the X-rays are predominantly produced by inverse Compton scattering of thermal optical/UV seed photons from the accretion disk by a distribution of hot electrons-the corona-situated near the disk. Most of the optical emission is generated in the accretion disk due to reprocessing of the X-ray emission. The relationships that we have uncovered between the accretion disk and the jet in 3C 111, as well as in the Fanaroff-Riley class I radio galaxy 3C 120 in a previous paper, support the paradigm that active galactic nuclei and Galactic BHXRBs are fundamentally similar, with characteristic time and size scales proportional to the mass of the central black hole.

• OSTI ID: 21576672
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 734, Issue 1; Other Information: DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/734/1/43; ISSN 0004-637X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTROPHYSICS
COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY
ACCRETION DISKS
BLACK HOLES
COMPTON EFFECT
EMISSION
GALAXY NUCLEI
JETS
MONITORING
RADIO GALAXIES
SEYFERT GALAXIES
SPECTRAL DENSITY
X RADIATION
X-RAY GALAXIES
BASIC INTERACTIONS
COSMIC RADIO SOURCES
COSMIC RAY SOURCES
COSMIC X-RAY SOURCES
ELASTIC SCATTERING
ELECTROMAGNETIC INTERACTIONS
ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION
FUNCTIONS
GALAXIES
INTERACTIONS
IONIZING RADIATIONS
RADIATIONS
SCATTERING
SPECTRAL FUNCTIONS