Constraints on the mass accretion rate onto the supermassive black hole of cygnus : A using the Submillimeter Array
We present the first detailed polarimetric studies of Cygnus A at 230 GHz with the Submillimeter Array (SMA) to constrain the mass accretion rate onto its supermassive black hole. We detected the polarized emission associated with the core at a fractional polarization of 0.73 +/- 0.15%. This low fra...
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Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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Format: | Article |
Published: |
IOP Publishing Ltd
2021
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Subjects: | |
Online Access: | http://eprints.um.edu.my/34637/ |
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Summary: | We present the first detailed polarimetric studies of Cygnus A at 230 GHz with the Submillimeter Array (SMA) to constrain the mass accretion rate onto its supermassive black hole. We detected the polarized emission associated with the core at a fractional polarization of 0.73 +/- 0.15%. This low fractional polarization suggests that the polarized emission is highly depolarized. One of the possible explanations is due to a significant variance in the Faraday rotation measure within the synthesized beam. By assuming the Faraday depolarization caused by inhomogeneous column density of the magnetized plasma associated with the surrounding radiatively-inefficient accretion flow within the SMA beam, we derived the constraint on the mass accretion rate to be larger than 0.15 M-circle dot yr(-1) at the Bondi radius. The derived constraint indicates that an adiabatic inflow-outflow solution or an advection-dominated accretion flow should be preferable as the accretion flow model in order to explain the jet power of Cygnus A. |
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