Emission from the jets of Low-luminosity Active Galactic Nuclei
G. Tomar*, N. Gupta and R. Prince
Pre-published on:
August 14, 2023
Published on:
September 27, 2024
Abstract
Low-Luminosity Active Galactic Nuclei (LLAGNs) are challenging to study due to their faintness despite occupying ~40$\%$ of the local Universe. The radiatively inefficient accretion flows that power these LLAGNs are known to be efficient at producing bipolar jets. Multi-wavelength observations of the jets act as a crucial probe of the physical mechanism in these extreme environments. The recent detection of LLAGNs NGC 315 and NGC 4261 in gamma rays by Fermi-LAT allows us to model their multi-wavelength spectral energy distribution (SED) from radio to gamma rays. We find that the synchrotron and synchrotron self-Compton emission from an emission region at sub-parsec scale jet can explain the SEDs up to a few GeV, leaving an excess beyond that. The gamma rays produced by the upscattering of the starlight photons from the host galaxy by the ultra-relativistic electrons at the kilo-parsec scale successfully explain this excess. Thus, similar to luminous AGNs, the electrons in the kilo-parsec jets of LLAGNs are also accelerated to ultra-relativistic energies. The ejection of a discrete knot from another LLAGN, M81*, again suggests similarities in the jet production mechanism for luminous AGNs and LLAGNs. Due to non-detection in gamma rays, we model its multi-wavelength SEDs from radio to X-rays at different epochs during the knot ejection to infer the properties of the jet. We also model the SEDs during other X-ray flaring periods identified from the long-term Swift light curve. As seen in the high-synchrotron-peaked blazars (a sub-class of luminous AGNs), the synchrotron emission from relativistic electrons from a single zone explains the SEDs from radio to X-ray during all states. We present these results and compare the similarities of these jets in LLAGNs with those produced in luminous AGNs.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.22323/1.444.0947
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