Caltech-NRAO Stripe 82 Survey (CNSS). IV. The Birth of Radio-loud Quasar 013815+00

Abstract

It is believed that the gas accretion onto supermassive black holes is the main process of powering this quasar's luminous emission, which occurs in optical, UV, and X-ray regimes and less frequently in radio waves. The observational fact that only a few percent of quasars are radio-loud is still an unresolved issue concerning the understanding of the active galactic nucleus (AGN) population. Here we present a detection of a rapid transition from the radio-quiet to the radio-loud mode in quasar 013815+00 (z = 0.94) which coincides with changes of its UV–optical continuum and the low ionization Mg II broadline. We interpret this as an enhancement of accretion onto a central black hole of about 10⁹ solar masses. As a consequence a new radio-loud AGN was born. Its spectral and morphological properties indicate that it went through the short gigahertz-peaked spectrum phase at the beginning of its activity and has now stabilized its flux density at the level of a few millijansky. The radio morphology of 013815+00 is very compact and we predict that with such short-term jet activity its development will be very slow. The observed luminosity changes of the accretion disk are shorter than the lifetime of the new radio phase in 013815+00.