A1 Vertaisarvioitu alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä lehdessä
High Optical-to-X-Ray Polarization Ratio Reveals Compton Scattering in BL Lacertae’s Jet
Tekijät: Agudo, Ivan; Liodakis, Ioannis; Otero-Santos, Jorge; Middei, Riccardo; Marscher, Alan; Jorstad, Svetlana; Zhang, Haocheng; Li, Hui; Di Gesu, Laura; Romani, Roger W.; Kim, Dawoon E.; Fenu, Francesco; Marshall, Herman L.; Pacciani, Luigi; Pedrosa, Juan Escudero; Aceituno, Francisco Jose; Agis-Gonzalez, Beatriz; Bonnoli, Giacomo; Casanova, Victor; Morcuende, Daniel; Piirola, Vilppu; Sota, Alfredo; Kouch, Pouya M.; Lindfors, Elina; McCall, Callum; Jermak, Helen E.; Steele, Iain A.; Borman, George A.; Grishina, Tatiana S.; Hagen-Thorn, Vladimir A.; Kopatskaya, Evgenia N.; Larionova, Elena G.; Morozova, Daria A.; Savchenko, Sergey S.; Shishkina, Ekaterina V.; Troitskiy, Ivan S.; Troitskaya, Yulia V.; Vasilyev, Andrey A.; Zhovtan, Alexey V.; Myserlis, Ioannis; Gurwell, Mark; Keating, Garrett; Rao, Ramprasad; Kang, Sincheol; Lee, Sang-Sung; Kim, Sanghyun; Cheong, Whee Yeon; Jeong, Hyeon-Woo; Angelakis, Emmanouil; Kraus, Alexander; Blinov, Dmitry; Maharana, Siddharth; Bachev, Rumen; Jormanainen, Jenni; Nilsson, Kari; Fallah Ramazani, Vandad; Casadio, Carolina; Fuentes, Antonio; Traianou, Efthalia; Thum, Clemens; Gomez, Jose L.; Antonelli, Lucio Angelo; Bachetti, Matteo; Baldini, Luca; Baumgartner, Wayne H.; Bellazzini, Ronaldo; Bianchi, Stefano; Bongiorno, Stephen D.; Bonino, Raffaella; Brez, Alessandro; Bucciantini, Niccolo; Capitanio, Fiamma; Castellano, Simone; Cavazzuti, Elisabetta; Chen, Chien-Ting; Ciprini, Stefano; Costa, Enrico; De Rosa, Alessandra; Del Monte, Ettore; Di Lalla, Niccolo; Di Marco, Alessandro; Donnarumma, Immacolata; Doroshenko, Victor; Dovciak, Michal; Ehlert, Steven R.; Enoto, Teruaki; Evangelista, Yuri; Fabiani, Sergio; Ferrazzoli, Riccardo; Garcia, Javier A.; Gunji, Shuichi; Hayashida, Kiyoshi; Heyl, Jeremy; Iwakiri, Wataru; Kaaret, Philip; Karas, Vladimir; Kislat, Fabian; Kitaguchi, Takao; Kolodziejczak, Jeffery J.; Krawczynski, Henric; La Monaca, Fabio; Latronico, Luca; Maldera, Simone; Manfreda, Alberto; Marin, Frederic; Marinucci, Andrea; Massaro, Francesco; Matt, Giorgio; Mitsuishi, Ikuyuki; Mizuno, Tsunefumi; Muleri, Fabio; Negro, Michela; Ng, Chi-Yung; O'Dell, Stephen L.; Omodei, Nicola; Oppedisano, Chiara; Papitto, Alessandro; Pavlov, George G.; Peirson, Abel L.; Perri, Matteo; Pesce-Rollins, Melissa; Petrucci, Pierre-Olivier; Pilia, Maura; Possenti, Andrea; Poutanen, Juri; Puccetti, Simonetta; Ramsey, Brian D.; Rankin, John; Ratheesh, Ajay; Roberts, Oliver J.; Sgro, Carmelo; Slane, Patrick; Soffitta, Paolo; Spandre, Gloria; Swartz, Douglas A.; Tamagawa, Toru; Tavecchio, Fabrizio; Taverna, Roberto; Tawara, Yuzuru; Tennant, Allyn F.; Thomas, Nicholas E.; Tombesi, Francesco; Trois, Alessio; Tsygankov, Sergey S.; Turolla, Roberto; Vink, Jacco; Weisskopf, Martin C.; Wu, Kinwah; Xie, Fei; Zane, Silvia
Kustantaja: Institute of Physics Publishing Ltd.
Kustannuspaikka: BRISTOL
Julkaisuvuosi: 2025
Journal: Astrophysical Journal Letters
Tietokannassa oleva lehden nimi: The Astrophysical Journal Letters
Lehden akronyymi: ASTROPHYS J LETT
Artikkelin numero: L15
Vuosikerta: 985
Numero: 1
Sivujen määrä: 18
ISSN: 2041-8205
eISSN: 2041-8213
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/adc572
Verkko-osoite: https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/adc572
Rinnakkaistallenteen osoite: https://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/499182979
Blazars, supermassive black hole systems with highly relativistic jets aligned with the line of sight, are the most powerful long-lived emitters of electromagnetic emission in the Universe. We report here on a radio-to-gamma-ray multiwavelength campaign on the blazar BL Lacertae with unprecedented polarimetric coverage from radio to X-ray wavelengths. The observations caught an extraordinary event on 2023 November 10-18, when the degree of linear polarization of optical synchrotron radiation reached a record value of 47.5%. In stark contrast, the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer found that the X-ray (Compton scattering or hadron-induced) emission was polarized at less than 7.4% (3 sigma confidence level). We argue here that this observational result rules out a hadronic origin of the high-energy emission and strongly favors a leptonic (Compton scattering) origin, thereby breaking the degeneracy between hadronic and leptonic emission models for BL Lacertae and demonstrating the power of multiwavelength polarimetry to address this question. Furthermore, the multiwavelength flux and polarization variability, featuring an extremely prominent rise and decay of the optical polarization degree, is interpreted for the first time by the relaxation of a magnetic "spring" embedded in the newly injected plasma. This suggests that the plasma jet can maintain a predominant toroidal magnetic field component parsecs away from the central engine.
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The Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) is a joint US and Italian mission. The US contribution is supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and led and managed by its Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), with industry partner Ball Aerospace (contract NNM15AA18C), now BAE Systems. The Italian contribution is supported by the Italian Space Agency (Agenzia Spaziale Italiana, ASI) through contract ASI-OHBI-2022-13-I.0, agreements ASI-INAF-2022-19-HH.0 and ASI-INFN-2017.13-H0, and its Space Science Data Center (SSDC) with agreements ASI-INAF-2022-14-HH.0 and ASI-INFN 2021-43-HH.0 and by the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF) and the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) in Italy. This research used data products provided by the IXPE Team (MSFC, SSDC, INAF, and INFN) and distributed with additional software tools by the High-Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC) at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). Based on observations obtained with XMM-Newton, an ESA science mission with instruments and contributions directly funded by ESA Member States and NASA. We acknowledge the use of public data from the Swift data archive. Some of the data are based on observations collected at the Observatorio de Sierra Nevada, which is owned and operated by the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (IAA-CSIC), and at the Centro Astronomico Hispano en Andalucia (CAHA), which is operated jointly by Junta de Andalucia and Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (IAA-CSIC). The Perkins Telescope Observatory, located in Flagstaff, Arizona, USA, is owned and operated by Boston University. Data from the Steward Observatory spectropolarimetric monitoring project were used. This program is supported by Fermi Guest Investigator grants NNX08AW56G, NNX09AU10G, NNX12AO93G, and NNX15AU81G. This research was partially supported by the Bulgarian National Science Fund of the Ministry of Education and Science under grants KP-06-H38/4 (2019) and KP-06-PN-68/1(2022). The Liverpool Telescope is operated on the island of La Palma by Liverpool John Moores University in the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias with financial support from the UKRI Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) (ST/T00147X/1). This research has made use of data from the RoboPol program, a collaboration between Caltech, the University of Crete, IA-FORTH, IUCAA, the MPIfR, and the Nicolaus Copernicus University, which was conducted at Skinakas Observatory in Crete, Greece. The data in this study include observations made with the Nordic Optical Telescope, owned in collaboration by the University of Turku and Aarhus University and operated jointly by Aarhus University, the University of Turku, and the University of Oslo, representing Denmark, Finland, and Norway; the University of Iceland; and Stockholm University at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos, La Palma, Spain, of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias. The data presented here were obtained in part with ALFOSC, which is provided by the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (IAA) under a joint agreement with the University of Copenhagen and NOT. The Submillimeter Array (SMA) is a joint project between the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics and is funded by the Smithsonian Institution and the Academia Sinica. Maunakea, the location of the SMA, is a culturally important site for the indigenous Hawaiian people; we are privileged to study the cosmos from its summit. The POLAMI observations reported here were carried out at the IRAM 30 m telescope. IRAM is supported by INSU/CNRS (France), MPG (Germany), and IGN (Spain). The KVN is a facility operated by the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute. The KVN operations are supported by the Korea Research Environment Open NETwork (KREONET), which is managed and operated by the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI). Partly based on observations with the 100 m telescope of the Max-Planck-Institut fur Radioastronomie (MPIfR) at Effelsberg. Observations with the 100 m radio telescope at Effelsberg have received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 101004719 (ORP). The IAA-CSIC coauthors acknowledge financial support from the Spanish "Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion" (MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033) through the Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa award for the Instituto de Astrofiisica de Andalucia-CSIC (CEX2021-001131-S) and through grants PID2019-107847RB-C44 and PID2022-139117NB-C44. I.L. was supported by the NASA Postdoctoral Program at the Marshall Space Flight Center, administered by Oak Ridge Associated Universities under contract with NASA. B.A.-G. and I.L. were funded by the European Union ERC-2022-STG - BOOTES - 101076343. Views and opinions expressed are, however, those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them. J.O.-S. acknowledges financial support from the project ref. AST22_00001_9 with funding from the European Union - NextGenerationEU, the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion y Universidades, Plan de Recuperacion, Transformacion y Resiliencia, the Consejeria de Universidad, Investigacion e Innovacion from the Junta de Andalucia, and the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, as well as from INFN Cap. U.1.01.01.01.009. This work has been partially supported by the ASI-INAF program I/004/11/4. The research at Boston University was supported in part by National Science Foundation grant AST-2108622, NASA Fermi Guest Investigator grants 80NSSC23K1507 and 80NSSC23K1508, NASA NuSTAR Guest Investigator grant 80NSSC24K0547, and NASA Swift Guest Investigator grant 80NSSC23K1145. This work was supported by NSF grant AST-2109127. H.Z. is supported by NASA under award number 80GSFC21M0002. H.Z.'s work is supported by Fermi GI program cycle 16 under award number 22-FERMI22-0015 and IXPE GO program cycle 1 under award numbers 80NSSC24K1160 and 80NSSC24K1173. Research by H.L. was supported by the Laboratory Directed Research and Development program of Los Alamos National Laboratory under project number 20220087DR. E.L. was supported by Academy of Finland projects 317636 and 320045. We acknowledge funding to support our NOT observations from the Finnish Centre for Astronomy with ESO (FINCA), University of Turku, Finland (Academy of Finland grant number 306531). S.K., S.-S.L., W.Y.C., S.-H.K., and H.-W.J. were supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MIST) (2020R1A2C2009003). C.C. acknowledges support by the European Research Council (ERC) under the HORIZON ERC grants 2021 program under grant agreement No. 101040021. This work was supported by JST, the establishment of university fellowships toward the creation of science technology innovation, grant No. JPMJFS2129. D.B. acknowledges support from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 771282.
