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Published February 1, 2024 | Version Published
Journal Article Open

Compact Symmetric Objects. II. Confirmation of a Distinct Population of High-luminosity Jetted Active Galaxies

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon FORTH Institute of Astrophysics
  • 2. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 3. ROR icon University of Manchester
  • 4. ROR icon Purdue University West Lafayette
  • 5. ROR icon University of Turku
  • 6. ROR icon University of Crete
  • 7. ROR icon University of New Mexico
  • 8. ROR icon Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Abstract

Compact symmetric objects (CSOs) are compact (<1 kpc), jetted active galactic nuclei (AGN), whose jet axes are not aligned close to the line of sight, and whose observed emission is not predominantly relativistically boosted toward us. Two classes of CSOs have previously been identified: approximately one-fifth are edge dimmed and the rest are edge brightened. We designate these as CSO 1s and 2s, respectively. This paper focuses almost exclusively on CSO 2s. Using complete samples of CSO 2s we present three independent lines of evidence, based on their relative numbers, redshift distributions, and size distributions, which show conclusively that the vast majority (>99%) of CSO 2s do not evolve into larger-scale radio sources. These CSO 2s belong to a distinct population of jetted AGN, which should be characterized as "short-lived," as opposed to "young," compared to the classes of larger jetted AGN. We show that there is a sharp upper cutoff in the CSO 2 size distribution at ≈500 pc. The distinct differences between most CSO 2s and other jetted AGN provides a crucial new time domain window on the formation and evolution of relativistic jets in AGN and the supermassive black holes that drive them.

Copyright and License

© 2024. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.

Acknowledgement

We thank John Peacock for useful discussions. We thank the reviewer of this paper for many helpful suggestions that have clarified several important aspects of this work. We are grateful for the use of the CATS database of Verkhodanov et al. (2005), of the Special Astrophysical Observatory. This research has made use of NASA's Astrophysics Data System Bibliographic Services. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED) which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This research has made use of data from the OVRO 40-m monitoring program (Richards et al. 2011), supported by private funding from the California Insitute of Technology and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, and by NASA grants NNX08AW31G, NNX11A043G, and NNX14AQ89G and NSF grants AST-0808050, AST-1109911, and AST-1835400. This research has made use of data from the MOJAVE database that is maintained by the MOJAVE team (Lister et al. 2018). The MOJAVE program is supported by NASA-Fermi grant 80NSSC19K1579. This research has made use of the CIRADA cutout service at http://cutouts.cirada.ca, operated by the Canadian Initiative for Radio Astronomy Data Analysis (CIRADA). CIRADA is funded by a grant from the Canada Foundation for Innovation 2017 Innovation Fund (Project 35999), as well as by the Provinces of Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, and Quebec, in collaboration with the National Research Council of Canada, the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory and Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. S.K. and K.T. acknowledge support from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Unions Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 771282. K.T. acknowledges support from the Foundation of Research and Technology—Hellas Synergy Grants Program through project POLAR, jointly implemented by the Institute of Astrophysics and the Institute of Computer Science. A.S. was supported by the NASA Contract NAS8-03060 to the Chandra X-ray Center.

This paper depended on a very large amount of VLBI data, almost all of which was taken with the Very Long Baseline Array. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.

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Identifiers

ISSN
1538-4357

Related works

Featured in
Caltech News: https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/sleeping-supermassive-black-holes-awakened-briefly-by-shredded-stars (URL)

Funding

California Institute of Technology
Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NNX08AW31G
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NNX11A043G
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NNX14AQ89G
National Science Foundation
AST-0808050
National Science Foundation
AST-1109911
National Science Foundation
AST-1835400
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
80NSSC19K1579
Canada Foundation for Innovation
2017-35999
National Research Council Canada
National Radio Astronomy Observatory
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation
European Research Council
771282
Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NAS8-03060

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