Faraday rotation in the jet of M87 inside the Bondi radius: indication of winds from hot accretion flows confining the relativistic jet

Abstract

We study Faraday rotation in the jet of M87 inside the Bondi radius using eight Very Long Baseline Array data sets, one at 8 GHz, four at 5 GHz, and three at 2 GHz. We obtain Faraday rotation measures (RMs) measured across the bandwidth of each data set. We find that the magnitude of RM systematically decreases with increasing distance from the black hole from 5,000 to 200,000 Schwarzschild radii. The data, showing predominantly negative RM sign without significant difference of the RMs on the northern and southern jet edges, suggest that the spatial extent of the Faraday screen is much larger than the jet. We apply models of hot accretion flows, thought to be prevalent in active galactic nuclei having relatively low luminosity such as M87, and find that the decrease of RM is described well by a gas density profile $\rho \propto r^{-1}$. This behavior matches the theoretically expected signature of substantial winds, nonrelativistic un-collimated gas outflows from hot accretion flows, which is consistent with the results of various numerical simulations. The pressure profile inferred from the density profile is flat enough to collimate the jet, which can result in gradual acceleration of the jet in a magneto-hydrodynamical process. This picture is in good agreement with the observed gradual collimation and acceleration of the M87 jet inside the Bondi radius. The dominance of negative RMs suggests that jet and wind axis are misaligned such that the jet emission exposes only one side of the toroidal magnetic fields permeating the winds.

24 pages, 14 figures, 5 tables. accepted for publication in ApJ

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