A two-sided but significantly beamed jet in the supercritical accretion quasar IRAS F11119+3257
Journal article, 2020

Highly accreting quasars are quite luminous in the X-ray and optical regimes; while, they tend to become radio quiet and have optically thin radio spectra. Among the known quasars, IRAS F11119+3257 is a supercritical accretion source because it has a bolometric luminosity slightly above the Eddington limit and extremely powerful X-ray outflows. To probe its radio structure, we investigated its radio spectrum between 0.15 and 96.15 GHz and performed very-long-baseline interferometric (VLBI) observations with the European VLBI Network (EVN) at 1.66 and 4.93 GHz. The deep EVN image at 1.66 GHz shows a two-sided jet with a projected separation about 200 pc and a very high flux density ratio of about 290. Together with the best-fitting value of the integrated spectral index of -1.31 +/- 0.02 in the optically thin part, we infer that the approaching jet has an intrinsic speed at least 0.57 times of the light speed. This is a new record among the known all kinds of super-Eddington accreting sources and unlikely accelerated by the radiation pressure in a certain models. We propose a scenario in which IRAS F11119+3257 is an unusual compact symmetric object with a small jet viewing angle and a radio spectrum peaking at 0.53 +/- 0.06 GHz mainly due to the synchrotron self-absorption.

galaxies: jets

quasars: individual: IRAS F11119+3257

galaxies: active

radio continuum: galaxies

Author

Jun Yang

Chalmers, Space, Earth and Environment, Onsala Space Observatory

Zsolt Paragi

Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe (JIVE)

Tao An

Chinese Academy of Sciences

Willem Baan

Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON)

Chinese Academy of Sciences

Prashanth Mohan

Chinese Academy of Sciences

Xiang Liu

Chinese Academy of Sciences

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

0035-8711 (ISSN) 1365-2966 (eISSN)

Vol. 494 2 1744-1750

Subject Categories

Astronomy, Astrophysics and Cosmology

Atom and Molecular Physics and Optics

Other Physics Topics

DOI

10.1093/MNRAS/STAA836

More information

Latest update

5/18/2021