Simultaneous Chandra, CSO and VLA Observations of Sgr A*: The Nature of Flaring Activity

TL;DR

This study presents simultaneous multi-wavelength observations of Sgr A*'s flaring activity, revealing time delays and polarization that support a model of an expanding synchrotron-emitting plasma bubble near the black hole.

Contribution

It provides the first simultaneous multi-wavelength light curves of Sgr A*'s flares, supporting a cooling adiabatic expansion model with specific physical parameters.

Findings

Detected time delays between X-ray, sub-mm, and radio flares.

Measured polarization at 7 and 13 mm wavelengths.

Derived physical parameters of the emitting plasma, including expansion speed and magnetic field.

Abstract

Sgr A*, the massive black hole at the center of the Galaxy, varies in radio through X-ray emission on hourly time scales. The flare activity is thought to arise from the innermost region of an accretion flow onto Sgr A*. We present simultaneous light curves of Sgr A* in radio, sub-mm and X-rays that show a possible time delay of 110$\pm17$ minutes between X-ray and 850 $\mu$m suggesting that the sub-mm flare emission is optically thick. At radio wavelengths, we detect time lags of of $20.4\pm6.8, 30\pm12$ and 20$\pm6$ minutes between the flare peaks observed at 13 and 7 mm (22 and 43 GHz) in three different epochs using the VLA. Linear polarization of 1$\pm0.2$% and 0.7$\pm0.1$% is detected at 7 and 13 mm, respectively, when averaged over the entire observation on 2006 July 17. A simple model of a bubble of synchrotron emitting electrons cooling via adiabatic expansion can explain the time delay between various wavelengths, the asymmetric shape of the light curves, and the observed polarization of the flare emission at 43 and 22 GHz. The derived physical quantities that characterize the emission give an expansion speed of v$_{exp} \sim 0.003-0.1$c, magnetic field of B$\sim$10-70 Gauss and particle spectral index p$\sim$1-2. These parameters suggest that the associated plasma cannot escape from Sgr A* unless it has a large bulk motion.