Galaxies as High-Resolution Telescopes
arXiv:1705.00690 · doi:10.3847/1538-4357/aa86ec
Abstract
Recent observations show a population of active galaxies with milliarcseconds offsets between optical and radio emission. Such offsets can be an indication of extreme phenomena associated with supermassive black holes including relativistic jets, binary supermassive black holes, or even recoiling supermassive black holes. However, the multi-wavelength structure of active galaxies at a few milliarcseconds cannot be fathomed with direct observations. We propose using strong gravitational lensing to elucidate the multi-wavelength structure of sources. When sources are located close to the caustic of lensing galaxy, even small offset in the position of the sources results in a drastic difference in the position and magnification of mirage images. We show that the angular offset in the position of the sources can be amplified more than 50 times in the observed position of mirage images. We find that at least 8% of the observed gravitationally lensed quasars will be in the caustic configuration. The synergy between SKA and Euclid will provide an ideal set of observations for thousands of gravitationally lensed sources in the caustic configuration, which will allow us to elucidate the multi-wavelength structure for a large ensemble of sources, and study the physical origin of radio emissions, their connection to supermassive black holes, and their cosmic evolution.
Accepted for publication in ApJ
References in corpus (18)
- Gaia Data Release 1: Astrometry - one billion positions, two million proper motions and parallaxes
- The Second-Generation Guide Star Catalog: Description and Properties
- Jet Launching Structure Resolved Near the Supermassive Black Hole in M87
- Relativistic Beaming and the Intrinsic Properties of Extragalactic Radio Jets
- Opacity in compact extragalactic radio sources and its effect on astrophysical and astrometric studies
- Constraining the Location of Gamma-Ray Flares in Luminous Blazars
- VLBI-Gaia offsets favor parsec-scale jet direction in Active Galactic Nuclei
- Gaia Data Release 1: The reference frame and the optical properties of ICRF sources
- On significance of VLBI/Gaia position offsets
- The birth of a supermassive black hole binary
- Observational consequences of optical band milliarcsecond-scale structure in active galactic nuclei discovered by Gaia
- Astrometric evidence for a population of dislodged AGN
- Resolving the Geometry of the Innermost Relativistic Jets in Active Galactic Nuclei
- Spatially Offset Active Galactic Nuclei. II: Triggering in Galaxy Mergers
- The Nature of Active Galactic Nuclei with Velocity Offset Emission Lines
- Relation between Events in the Millimeter-wave Core and Gamma-ray Outbursts in Blazar Jets
- A size-duration trend for gamma-ray burst progenitors
- Substructure and the Cusp and Fold Relations
Cited by in corpus (4)
- Gravitational Lenses as High-Resolution Telescopes
- Constraining VLBI-optical offsets in high redshift galaxies using strong gravitational lensing
- Resolving Complex Inner X-ray Structure of the Gravitationaly Lensed AGN MGB2016+112
- Milliarcsecond X-ray astrometry to resolve inner regions of AGN at using gravitational lensing