Angular Broadening of Intraday Variable AGN. II. Interstellar and Intergalactic Scattering

TL;DR

This study investigates the scattering properties of 58 AGN using VLBA observations, revealing interstellar scattering effects linked to Galactic interstellar medium and exploring potential intergalactic scattering influences.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive analysis of interstellar and intergalactic scattering effects on a large AGN sample with multi-wavelength VLBA data.

Findings

Interstellar scattering diameters are typically 2 mas at 1 GHz.

Scintillating AGN are generally at lower Galactic latitudes.

No significant difference in scattering between scintillating and non-scintillating AGN.

Abstract

We analyze a sample of 58 multi-wavelength, Very Long Baseline Array observations of active galactic nuclei (AGN) to determine their scattering properties. Approximately 75% of the sample consists of AGN that exhibit centimeter-wavelength intraday variability (interstellar scintillation) while the other 25% do not show intraday variability. We find that interstellar scattering is measurable for most of these AGN, and the typical broadening diameter is 2 mas at 1 GHz. We find that the scintillating AGN are typically at lower Galactic latitudes than the non-scintillating AGN, consistent with the scenario that intraday variability is a propagation effect from the Galactic interstellar medium. The magnitude of the inferred interstellar broadening measured toward the scintillating AGN, when scaled to higher frequencies, is comparable to the diameters inferred from analyses of the light curves for the more well-known intraday variable sources. However, we find no difference in the amount of scattering measured toward the scintillating versus non-scintillating AGN. A consistent picture is one in which the scintillation results from localized regions ("clumps") distributed throughout the Galactic disk, but which individually make little contribution to the angular broadening. Of the 58 AGN observed, 37 (64%) have measured redshifts. At best, a marginal trend is found for scintillating (non-scintillating) AGN to have smaller (larger) angular diameters at higher redshifts. We also use our observations to try to constrain the possibility of intergalactic scattering. While broadly consistent with the scenario of a highly turbulent intergalactic medium, our observations do not place significant constraints on its properties.