No Arabic abstract
The three basic ingredients - a spinning compact object, an accretion disc and a collimated relativistic jet - make microquasars a galactic scaled-down version of the radio-loud AGN. That explains the large interest attributed to this new class of objects, which up to now consists of less than 20 members. Microquasars belong to the much larger class of X-ray binary systems, where there exits a compact object together with its X-ray emitting accretion disc, but the relativistic jet is missing. When does an X-ray binary system evolve into a microquasar? Ideal for studying such kind of a transition is the periodic microquasar LSI+61deg303 formed by a compact object accreting from the equatorial wind of a Be star and with more than one event of super-critical accretion and ejection along the eccentric orbit. For ejections at periastron passage the relativistic electrons suffer severe inverse Compton losses by upscattering the UV photons of the Be star at high energy : At periastron passage Gamma-ray emission has been observed, whereas radio outbursts have never been observed in 20 years of radio flux monitoring. For ejections displaced from periastron passage the losses are less severe and radio outbursts are observed. The radio emission mapped on scales from a few AU to hundreds of AU shows a double-sided relativistic (beta=0.6c) S-shaped jet, similar to the well-known precessing jet of SS433.
We discuss 6 GHz JVLA observations covering a volume-limited sample of 178 low redshift ($0.2 < z < 0.3$) optically selected QSOs. Our 176 radio detections fall into two clear categories: (1) About $20$% are radio-loud QSOs (RLQs) having spectral luminosities $L_6 gtrsim 10^{,23.2} mathrm{~W~Hz}^{-1}$ primarily generated in the active galactic nucleus (AGN) responsible for the excess optical luminosity that defines a emph{bona fide} QSO. (2) The radio-quiet QSOs (RQQs) have $10^{,21} lesssim L_6 lesssim 10^{,23.2} mathrm{~W~Hz}^{-1}$ and radio sizes $lesssim 10 mathrm{~kpc}$, and we suggest that the bulk of their radio emission is powered by star formation in their host galaxies. Radio silent QSOs ($L_6 lesssim 10^{,21} mathrm{~W~Hz}^{-1}$) are rare, so most RQQ host galaxies form stars faster than the Milky Way; they are not red and dead ellipticals. Earlier radio observations did not have the luminosity sensitivity $L_6 lesssim 10^{,21} mathrm{~W~Hz}^{-1}$ needed to distinguish between such RLQs and RQQs. Strong, generally double-sided, radio emission spanning $gg 10 mathrm{~kpc}$ was found associated with 13 of the 18 RLQ cores having peak flux densities $S_mathrm{p} > 5 mathrm{~mJy~beam}^{-1}$ ($log(L) gtrsim 24$). The radio luminosity function of optically selected QSOs and the extended radio emission associated with RLQs are both inconsistent with simple unified models that invoke relativistic beaming from randomly oriented QSOs to explain the difference between RLQs and RQQs. Some intrinsic property of the AGNs or their host galaxies must also determine whether or not a QSO appears radio loud.
We present the study on the X-ray emission for a sample of radio-detected quasars constructed from the cross-matches between SDSS, FIRST catalogs and XMM-Newton archives. A sample of radio-quiet SDSS quasars without FIRST radio detection is also assembled for comparison. We construct the optical and X-ray composite spectra normalized at rest frame $4215,rm AA$ (or $2200,rm AA$) for both radio-loud quasars (RLQs) and radio-quiet quasars (RQQs) at $zle3.2$, with matched X-ray completeness of 19%, redshift and optical luminosity. While the optical composite spectrum of RLQs is similar to that of RQQs, we find that RLQs have higher X-ray composite spectrum than RQQs, consistent with previous studies in the literature. By dividing the radio-detected quasars into radio loudness bins, we find the X-ray composite spectra are generally higher with increasing radio loudness. Moreover, a significant correlation is found between the optical-to-X-ray spectral index and radio loudness, and there is a unified multi-correlation between the radio, X-ray luminosities and radio loudness in radio-detected quasars. These results could be possibly explained with the corona-jet model, in which the corona and jet are directly related.
We compare the optical properties of the host galaxies of radio-quiet (RQ) and radio-loud (RL) Type 2 active galactic nuclei (AGNs) to infer whether the jet production efficiency depends on the host properties or is determined just by intrinsic properties of the accretion flows. We carefully select galaxies from SDSS, FIRST, and NVSS catalogs. We confirm previous findings that the fraction of RL AGNs depends on the black-hole (BH) masses, and on the Eddington ratio. The comparison of the nature of the hosts of RL and RQ AGNs, therefore, requires pair-matching techniques. Matching in BH mass and Eddington ratio allows us to study the differences between galaxies hosting RL and RQ AGNs that have the same basic accretion parameters. We show that these two samples differ predominantly in the host-galaxy concentration index, morphological type (in the RL sample the frequency of elliptical galaxies becoming larger with increasing radio loudness), and nebular extinction (galaxies with highest radio loudness showing only low nebular extinction). Contrary to some previous studies, we find no significant difference between our radio-loud and radio-quiet samples regarding merger/interaction features.
Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) are known to cover an extremely broad range of radio luminosities and the spread of their radio-loudness is very large at any value of the Eddington ratio. This implies very diverse jet production efficiencies which can result from the spread of the black hole spins and magnetic fluxes. Magnetic fluxes can be developed stochastically in the innermost zones of accretion discs, or can be advected to the central regions prior to the AGN phase. In the latter case there could be systematic differences between the properties of galaxies hosting radio-loud (RL) and radio-quiet (RQ) AGNs. In the former case the differences should be negligible for objects having the same Eddington ratio. To study the problem we decided to conduct a comparison study of host galaxy properties of RL and RQ AGNs. In this study we selected type II AGNs from SDSS spectroscopic catalogues. Our RL AGN sample consists of the AGNs appearing in the Best & Heckman (2012) catalogue of radio galaxies. To compare RL and RQ galaxies that have the same AGN parameters we matched the galaxies in black hole mass, Eddington ratio and redshift. We compared several properties of the host galaxies in these two groups of objects like galaxy mass, colour, concentration index, line widths, morphological type and interaction signatures. We found that in the studied group RL AGNs are preferentially hosted by elliptical galaxies while RQ ones are hosted by galaxies of later type. We also found that the fraction of interacting galaxies is the same in both groups of AGNs. These results suggest that the magnetic flux in RL AGNs is advected to the nucleus prior to the AGN phase.
We report millimetre-wave continuum observations of the X-ray binaries Cygnus X-3, SS 433, LSI+61 303, Cygnus X-1 and GRS 1915+105. The observations were carried out with the IRAM 30 m-antenna at 250 GHz (1.25 mm) from 1998 March 14 to March 20. These millimetre measurements are complemented with centimetre observations from the Ryle Telescope, at 15 GHz (2.0 cm) and from the Green Bank Interferometer at 2.25 and 8.3 GHz (13 and 3.6 cm). Both Cygnus X-3 and SS 433 underwent moderate flaring events during our observations, whose main spectral evolution properties are described and interpreted. A significant spectral steepening was observed in both sources during the flare decay, that is likely to be caused by adiabatic expansion, inverse Compton and synchrotron losses. Finally, we also report 250 GHz upper limits for three additional undetected X-ray binary stars: LSI+65 010, LSI+61 235 and X Per.