First Detection of 350 Micron Polarization From a Radio-loud AGN

Abstract

We report the first detection of linearly polarized emission at an observing wavelength of 350 $\mu$m from the radio-loud Active Galactic Nucleus 3C 279. We conducted polarization observations for 3C 279 using the SHARP polarimeter in the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory on 2014 March 13 and 14. For the first time, we detected the linear polarization with the degree of polarization of 13.3\%$\pm$3.4\% ($3.9\sigma$) and the Electric Vector Position Angle (EVPA) of 34.7${}^{\circ }\pm 5.6^{\circ }$. We also observed 3C~279 simultaneously at 13, 7, and 3.5 mm in dual polarization with the Korean very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) Network on 2014 March 6 (single dish) and imaged in milliarcsecond (mas) scales at 13, 7, 3.5, and 2.3 mm on March 22 (VLBI). We found that the degree of linear polarization increases from 10\% to 13\% at 13 mm to 350 $\mu$m and the EVPAs at all observing frequencies are parallel within $<10^{\circ }$ to the direction of the jet at mas scale, implying that the integrated magnetic fields are perpendicular to the jet in the innermost regions. We also found that the Faraday rotation measures RM are in a range of $-6.5\times 10^2\sim -2.7\times 10^3$ rad m${}^{-2}$ between 13 and 3.5 mm, and are scaled as a function of wavelength: $|\mathrm{RM}|\propto {\lambda }^{-2.2}$. These results indicate that the mm and sub-mm polarization emission are generated in the compact jet within 1~mas scale and affected by a Faraday screen in or in the close proximity of the jet.

9 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables, ApJ Letter in press

References in corpus (7)

• Multiwaveband Polarimetric Observations of 15 Active Galactic Nuclei at High Frequencies: Correlated Polarization Behavior
• A Global 86GHz VLBI Survey of Compact Radio Sources
• A strong magnetic field in the jet base of a supermassive black hole
• The First Simultaneous 3.5 and 1.3mm Polarimetric Survey of Active Galactic Nuclei in the Northern Sky
• Faraday Rotation from Magnesium II Absorbers towards Polarized Background Radio Sources
• Probing the Parsec-scale Accretion Flow of 3C 84 with Millimeter Polarimetry
• Monitoring of multi-frequency polarization of gamma-ray bright AGNs

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Polarimetric properties of Event Horizon Telescope targets from ALMA
• Acceleration of Compact Radio Jets on Sub-parsec Scales
• Polarimetry at millimeter wavelengths with the NIKA camera: calibration and performance
• Monitoring of GAmma-ray Bright AGN : The Multi-frequency Polarization of the Flaring Blazar 3C 279
• Probing the gamma-ray variability in 3C279 using broadband observations
• Interferometric Monitoring of Gamma-ray Bright AGNs: S5 0716+714
• First polarization study of the M87 jet and active galactic nuclei at submillimeter wavelengths with ALMA
• Magnetic Fields Studies in the Next Decade: EAO Submillimetre Futures White Paper Series, 2019