Spectropolarimetric monitoring of active galaxy 3C390.3 with 6m telescope SAO RAS in the period 2009-2014

Abstract

Here we present the spectropolarimetric observations of the radio loud active galaxy 3C 390.3 in the period 2009-2014 (24 epochs). The galaxy has been observed with the 6-meter telescope of SAO RAS using the SCORPIO spectropolarimeter. We explore the variability and lags in the polarized light of the continuum and broad H$\alpha$ line. We give the Stokes parameters $Q,U$, degree of linear polarization $P$ and the position angle of the polarization plane, $\phi$, for 24 epochs. We find a small lag~(10-40 days) between the unpolarized and polarized continuum that is significantly smaller than the estimated lags for the unpolarized broad emission lines (lag(H$\alpha$)$\sim$138-186 and lag(H$\beta$)$\sim$60-79 days). This shows that the region of the variable polarized continuum is significantly smaller than the broad line region, indicating that a part of the polarized continuum is coming from the jet. The lag of the polarized light in the H$\alpha$ line (89-156 days) indicates an additional component to the disc one that has an outflowing velocity of $\sim$-1200 km s${}^{-1}$. This region seems to depolarize the polarized broad H$\alpha$ line emitted from the disc and scattered in the inner part of the torus.

12 pages, 7 figures, MNRAS accepted

References in corpus (7)

• Periodic Oscillations in the Intra-day Optical Light Curves of the Blazar S5 0716+714
• Improved AGN light curve analysis with the z-transformed discrete correlation function
• Spectral optical monitoring of 3C390.3 in 1995-2007: I. Light curves and flux variation of the continuum and broad lines
• South Pole Telescope Detections of the Previously Unconfirmed Planck Early SZ Clusters in the Southern Hemisphere
• Time Series Analysis of Active Galactic Nuclei: The case of Arp 102B, 3C 390.3, NGC 5548 and NGC 4051
• Further Evidence for the Accretion Disk Origination of the Double-Peaked Broad H$\alpha$ of 3C390.3
• Optical Monitoring of 3C 390.3 from 1995 to 2004 and Possible Periodicities in the Historical Light Curve

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Spectroscopy and polarimetry of the gravitationally lensed quasar SDSS J1004+4112 with the 6m SAO RAS telescope
• Spectral variability of the 3C 390.3 nucleus for more than twenty years. I. Variability of the broad and narrow emission-line fluxes
• Predicting the broad lines polarization emitted by supermassive binary black holes
• Spectroscopy and polarimetry of the gravitationally lensed quasar Q0957+561
• Tracking the state transitions in changing-look active galactic nuclei through their polarized-light echoes
• Spectral variability of the 3C 390.3 nucleus for more than 20 years -- II. Variability of the broad emission-line profiles and He II $\lambda 4686$A emission-line fluxes
• Spectropolarimetry and spectral decomposition of high-accreting Narrow Line Seyfert 1 galaxies
• Photometric reverberation mapping of AGNs at 0.1 < z < 0.8: I. Observational technique
• Constraints on the optical polarization source in the luminous non-blazar quasar 3C 323.1 (PG 1545+210) from the photometric and polarimetric variability
• Polarization in broad emission lines of Active Galactic Nuclei