Multi-scale Radio and X-ray Structure of the High-redshift Quasar PMN J0909+0354

Abstract

The high-redshift quasar PMN J0909+0354 ($z=3.288$) is known to have a pc-scale compact jet structure, based on global 5-GHz very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) observations performed in 1992. Its kpc-scale structure was studied with the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) in the radio and the Chandra space telescope in X-rays. Apart from the north-northwestern jet component seen in both the VLA and Chandra images at $2.3^{\prime \prime }$ separation from the core, there is another X-ray feature at $6.48^{\prime \prime }$ in the northeastern (NE) direction. To uncover more details and possibly structural changes in the inner jet, we conducted new observations at 5 GHz using the European VLBI Network (EVN) in 2019. These data confirm the northward direction of the one-sided inner jet already suspected from the 1992 observations. A compact core and multiple jet components were identified that can be traced up to $\sim 0.25$ kpc projected distance towards the north, while the structure becomes more and more diffuse. A comparison with arcsec-resolution imaging with the VLA shows that the radio jet bends by $\sim 30^{\circ }$ between the two scales. The direction of the pc-scale jet as well as the faint optical counterpart found for the newly-detected X-ray point source (NE) favors the nature of the latter as a background or foreground object in the field of view. However, the extended ($\sim 160$ kpc) emission around the positions of the quasar core and NE detected by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) in the mid-infrared might suggest physical interaction of the two objects.

20 pages, 10 figures, 4 tables, accepted for publication in ApJ