An optical perspective on early-stage AGN with extreme radio flares

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Crepaldi, Luca, Berton, Marco, Barba, Benedetta Dalla, La Mura, Giovanni, Järvelä, Emilia, Vietri, Amelia, Ciroi, Stefano
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866917980378497024
author Crepaldi, Luca
Berton, Marco
Barba, Benedetta Dalla
La Mura, Giovanni
Järvelä, Emilia
Vietri, Amelia
Ciroi, Stefano
author_facet Crepaldi, Luca
Berton, Marco
Barba, Benedetta Dalla
La Mura, Giovanni
Järvelä, Emilia
Vietri, Amelia
Ciroi, Stefano
contents In the last decade of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) monitoring programs, the Metsähovi Radio Observatory detected multiple times seven powerful flaring narrow-line Seyfert 1 (NLS1) galaxies at 37 GHz. Several hypotheses have been proposed, but the understanding of this unique phenomenon is still far. To look at the case from a different point of view, we performed an emission line analysis of the optical spectra, with the aim of identifying similarities among the sources, that can be in turn possibly tied with the radio behavior. Our data were obtained with the Gran Telescopio Canarias. The results we obtained show that six out of seven sources have typical properties for the NLS1 class, and one of them is an intermediate Seyfert galaxy. We found on average black hole masses above the median value for the class (> 10$^7$ M$_\odot$), and a strong Fe II emission, which could be a proxy for an intense ongoing accretion activity. Although interesting, the characteristics we found are not unusual for these kind of AGN: the optical spectra of our sources do not related with their unique radio properties. Therefore, further multi-wavelength studies will be necessary to narrow the field of hypotheses for this peculiar phenomenon.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_13214
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle An optical perspective on early-stage AGN with extreme radio flares
Crepaldi, Luca
Berton, Marco
Barba, Benedetta Dalla
La Mura, Giovanni
Järvelä, Emilia
Vietri, Amelia
Ciroi, Stefano
Astrophysics of Galaxies
In the last decade of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) monitoring programs, the Metsähovi Radio Observatory detected multiple times seven powerful flaring narrow-line Seyfert 1 (NLS1) galaxies at 37 GHz. Several hypotheses have been proposed, but the understanding of this unique phenomenon is still far. To look at the case from a different point of view, we performed an emission line analysis of the optical spectra, with the aim of identifying similarities among the sources, that can be in turn possibly tied with the radio behavior. Our data were obtained with the Gran Telescopio Canarias. The results we obtained show that six out of seven sources have typical properties for the NLS1 class, and one of them is an intermediate Seyfert galaxy. We found on average black hole masses above the median value for the class (> 10$^7$ M$_\odot$), and a strong Fe II emission, which could be a proxy for an intense ongoing accretion activity. Although interesting, the characteristics we found are not unusual for these kind of AGN: the optical spectra of our sources do not related with their unique radio properties. Therefore, further multi-wavelength studies will be necessary to narrow the field of hypotheses for this peculiar phenomenon.
title An optical perspective on early-stage AGN with extreme radio flares
topic Astrophysics of Galaxies
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.13214