Liodakis, Ioannis and Marscher, Alan P. and Agudo, Iván and Berdyugin, Andrei V. and Bernardos, Maria I. and Bonnoli, Giacomo and Borman, George A. and Casadio, Carolina and Casanova, Vı́ctor and Cavazzuti, Elisabetta and Rodriguez Cavero, Nicole and Di Gesu, Laura and Di Lalla, Niccoló and Donnarumma, Immacolata and Ehlert, Steven R. and Errando, Manel and Escudero, Juan and Garcı́a-Comas, Maya and Agı́s-González, Beatriz and Husillos, César and Jormanainen, Jenni and Jorstad, Svetlana G. and Kagitani, Masato and Kopatskaya, Evgenia N. and Kravtsov, Vadim and Krawczynski, Henric and Lindfors, Elina and Larionova, Elena G. and Madejski, Grzegorz M. and Marin, Frédéric and Marchini, Alessandro and Marshall, Herman L. and Morozova, Daria A. and Massaro, Francesco and Masiero, Joseph R. and Mawet, Dimitri and Middei, Riccardo and Millar-Blanchaer, Maxwell A. and Myserlis, Ioannis and Negro, Michela and Nilsson, Kari and O’Dell, Stephen L. and Omodei, Nicola and Pacciani, Luigi and Paggi, Alessandro and Panopoulou, Georgia V. and Peirson, Abel L. and Perri, Matteo and Petrucci, Pierre-Olivier and Poutanen, Juri and Puccetti, Simonetta and Romani, Roger W. and Sakanoi, Takeshi and Savchenko, Sergey S. and Sota, Alfredo and Tavecchio, Fabrizio and Tinyanont, Samaporn and Vasilyev, Andrey A. and Weaver, Zachary R. and Zhovtan, Alexey V. and Antonelli, Lucio A. and Bachetti, Matteo and Baldini, Luca and Baumgartner, Wayne H. and Bellazzini, Ronaldo and Bianchi, Stefano and Bongiorno, Stephen D. and Bonino, Raffaella and Brez, Alessandro and Bucciantini, Niccolò and Capitanio, Fiamma and Castellano, Simone and Ciprini, Stefano and Costa, Enrico and De Rosa, Alessandra and Del Monte, Ettore and Di Marco, Alessandro and Doroshenko, Victor and Dovčiak, Michal and Enoto, Teruaki and Evangelista, Yuri and Fabiani, Sergio and Ferrazzoli, Riccardo and García, Javier A. and Gunji, Shuichi and Hayashida, Kiyoshi and Heyl, Jeremy and Iwakiri, Wataru and Karas, Vladimir and Kitaguchi, Takao and Kolodziejczak, Jeffery J. and La Monaca, Fabio and Latronico, Luca and Maldera, Simone and Manfreda, Alberto and Marinucci, Andrea and Matt, Giorgio and Mitsuishi, Ikuyuki and Mizuno, Tsunefumi and Muleri, Fabio and Ng, Stephen C.-Y. and Oppedisano, Chiara and Papitto, Alessandro and Pavlov, George G. and Pesce-Rollins, Melissa and Pilia, Maura and Possenti, Andrea and Ramsey, Brian D. and Rankin, John and Ratheesh, Ajay and Sgró, Carmelo and Slane, Patrick and Soffitta, Paolo and Spandre, Gloria and Tamagawa, Toru and Taverna, Roberto and Tawara, Yuzuru and Tennant, Allyn F. and Thomas, Nicolas E. and Tombesi, Francesco and Trois, Alessio and Tsygankov, Sergey and Turolla, Roberto and Vink, Jacco and Weisskopf, Martin C. and Wu, Kinwah and Xie, Fei and Zane, Silvia (2022) Polarized blazar X-rays imply particle acceleration in shocks. Nature, 611 (7937). pp. 677-681. ISSN 0028-0836. PMCID PMC9684068. doi:10.1038/s41586-022-05338-0. https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20221212-796684400.32
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Abstract
Most of the light from blazars, active galactic nuclei with jets of magnetized plasma that point nearly along the line of sight, is produced by high-energy particles, up to around 1 TeV. Although the jets are known to be ultimately powered by a supermassive black hole, how the particles are accelerated to such high energies has been an unanswered question. The process must be related to the magnetic field, which can be probed by observations of the polarization of light from the jets. Measurements of the radio to optical polarization—the only range available until now—probe extended regions of the jet containing particles that left the acceleration site days to years earlier, and hence do not directly explore the acceleration mechanism, as could X-ray measurements. Here we report the detection of X-ray polarization from the blazar Markarian 501 (Mrk 501). We measure an X-ray linear polarization degree ΠX of around 10%, which is a factor of around 2 higher than the value at optical wavelengths, with a polarization angle parallel to the radio jet. This points to a shock front as the source of particle acceleration and also implies that the plasma becomes increasingly turbulent with distance from the shock.
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| Additional Information: | I.L. thanks the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe for their hospitality while this paper was written. We thank A. Veledina for discussions that helped improve this work. I.L. was supported by the JSPS postdoctoral short-term fellowship programme. The Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) is a joint US and Italian mission. The US contribution is supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and led and managed by its Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), with industry partner Ball Aerospace (contract NNM15AA18C). The Italian contribution is supported by the Italian Space Agency (Agenzia Spaziale Italiana, ASI) through contract ASI-OHBI-2017-12-I.0, agreements ASI-INAF-2017-12-H0 and ASI-INFN-2017.13-H0, and its Space Science Data Center (SSDC) with agreements ASI-INAF-2022-14-HH.0 and ASI-INFN 2021-43-HH.0, and by the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF) and the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) in Italy. This research used data products provided by the IXPE Team (MSFC, SSDC, INAF and INFN) and distributed with additional software tools by the High-Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC), at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). Data from the Steward Observatory spectropolarimetric monitoring project were used. This programme is supported by Fermi Guest Investigator grants NNX08AW56G, NNX09AU10G, NNX12AO93G and NNX15AU81G. This research has made use of data from the RoboPol programme, a collaboration between Caltech, the University of Crete, the Institute of Astrophysics-Foundation for Research and Technology (IA-FORTH), the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), the Max Planck Institute for Radioastronomy (MPIfR) and the Nicolaus Copernicus University, which was conducted at Skinakas Observatory in Crete, Greece. The Instituto Astrofísica Andalucía (IAA)-Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) co-authors acknowledge financial support from the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion (MCINN) through the ‘Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa‘ award for the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia-CSIC (SEV-2017-0709). Acquisition and reduction of the POLAMI and Monitoring AGN with Polarimetry at the Calar Alto Telescopes (MAPCAT) data were supported in part by Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MICINN) through grants AYA2016-80889-P and PID2019-107847RB-C44. The POLAMI observations were carried out at the IRAM 30 m Telescope. IRAM is supported by the National Institute of Sciences of the Universe (INSU)/Scientific Research National Center (CNRS) (France), Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (MPG) (Germany) and Instituto Geográfico Nacional (IGN) (Spain). The research at Boston University was supported in part by National Science Foundation grant AST-2108622, NASA Fermi Guest Investigator grant 80NSSC21K1917 and NASA Swift Guest Investigator grant 80NSSC22K0537. This study uses observations conducted with the 1.8 m Perkins Telescope Observatory in Arizona (USA), which is owned and operated by Boston University. Based on observations obtained at the Hale Telescope, Palomar Observatory as part of a continuing collaboration between the California Institute of Technology, NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Yale University and the National Astronomical Observatories of China. This research made use of Photutils, an Astropy package for detection and photometry of astronomical sources60. G.V.P. acknowledges support by NASA through the NASA Hubble Fellowship grant no. HST-HF2-51444.001-A awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Incorporated, under NASA contract NAS5-26555. Based on observations made with the Nordic Optical Telescope, owned in collaboration by the University of Turku and Aarhus University, and operated jointly by Aarhus University, the University of Turku and the University of Oslo, representing Denmark, Finland and Norway, the University of Iceland and Stockholm University at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos, La Palma, Spain, of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias. The data presented here were obtained (in part) with ALFOSC, which is provided by the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (IAA) under a joint agreement with the University of Copenhagen and the Nordic Optical Telescope. V.K. thanks the Vilho, Yrjö and Kalle Väisälä Foundation. J.J. was supported by Academy of Finland project 320085. E.L. was supported by Academy of Finland projects 317636 and 320045. Part of the French contribution was supported by the CNRS and the French spatial agency (CNES). Based on observations collected at the Observatorio de Sierra Nevada, owned and operated by the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (IAA-CSIC). Based on observations collected at the Centro Astronomico Hispano-Aleman (CAHA), proposal 22A-2.2-015, operated jointly by Junta de Andalucia and Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (IAA-CSIC). Open access funding provided by University of Turku (UTU) including Turku University Central Hospital. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Group: | Astronomy Department, Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC), Space Radiation Laboratory | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Issue or Number: | 7937 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| PubMed Central ID: | PMC9684068 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| DOI: | 10.1038/s41586-022-05338-0 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Record Number: | CaltechAUTHORS:20221212-796684400.32 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Persistent URL: | https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20221212-796684400.32 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Deposited By: | Research Services Depository | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Deposited On: | 13 Jan 2023 15:42 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Last Modified: | 17 Jan 2023 18:04 |
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