Non-radial motion in the TeV blazar S5 0716+714 The pc-scale kinematics of a BL Lac Object

Abstract

For the BL Lac object S5 0716+714 conflicting apparent velocities of jet component motion have been reported in the literature. This object is an intra-day variable source and suited to investigate a possible correlation between kinematic properties and flux-density variability on different timescales. We (re-)analyze 50 VLBI observations obtained with the VLBA at 5 different frequencies (5 to 43 GHz) between 1992.73 and 2006.32. We analyze the jet component motion in detail taking care not only to account for motion in the radial but also in the orthogonal direction. We study the evolution of the jet ridge line and search for correlations between radio band light curves and the kinematic properties of the jet components. We present an alternative kinematic scenario for jet component motion in S5 0716+714 with apparent stationarity of jet components (with regard to their core separation) with time. Jet components, however, do seem to move significantly non-radially with regard to their position angle and in a direction perpendicular to the major axis of the jet. We discuss a possible correlation between the long-term radio flux-density variability and the kinematics. We conclude that a geometric contribution to the origin of the long-term variability might not be negligible. Subluminal motion has been reported for most of the TeV blazars. Our analysis also confirms this for S5 0716+714. This result increases the number of TeV blazars showing apparent subluminal motion to 7.

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Cited by in corpus (17)

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• Connection between inner jet kinematics and broadband flux variability in the BL Lac object S5 0716+714
• Understanding BL Lac objects Structural & kinematic mode changes in the BL Lac object PKS 0735+178
• Intra-day variability observations of S5 0716+714 over 4.5 years at 4.8 GHz
• Multi-band Variability Analysis of Mrk 421
• Multifrequency VLBA study of the blazar S5 0716+714 during the active state in 2004 II. Large-scale jet kinematics and the comparison of the different methods of VLBI data imaging as applied to kinematic studies of AGN
• Geometrical and Kinematic Parameters of the Jet of the Blazar S5 0716+71 in a Helical-Jet Model
• Deconstructing blazars: A different scheme for jet kinematics in flat-spectrum AGN
• Gamma-rays in flat-spectrum AGN: Revisiting the fast jet hypothesis with the CJF sample
• Correlations between the peak flux density and the position angle of inner-jet in three blazars
• Long-term multiband optical variability of S5 0716+714 blazar
• The non-ballistic superluminal motion in the plane of the sky-II
• AGN jets under the microscope: A divide?