The non-ballistic superluminal motion in the plane of the sky

TL;DR

This paper proposes a non-ballistic model for superluminal motion in jets, explaining recent observations of inward-moving features and hot spot precession as superluminal phenomena caused by jet precession.

Contribution

It introduces a unified non-ballistic jet model where hot spot precession accounts for superluminal motions, challenging the standard ballistic interpretation.

Findings

Hot spots in jets can precess, causing apparent superluminal motion.

Inward-moving features are explained by non-ballistic jet dynamics.

The model predicts observable evolution patterns for ejecta.

Abstract

Faster-than-light or superluminal motion was originally predicted as a relativistic illusion of ballistic moving ejecta, and confirmed in a few tens of sources observationally. However, the recent results of the long-term multi-epoch observations of quasars, active galaxies, tracing the structure further along the jets and following the motion of individual features for longer time, rise questions that are difficult to understand by the standard ballistic model. I.e., the ejecta are aligned with the local jet direction, instead of the core; and within individual jets apparently inward-moving features are observed. Here we show that these unexpected phenomena, although only a small fraction among large samples, indicate the existence of non-ballistic jet motion, in which a continuous jet produces a discrete hot spot. And the precession of such a hot spot in the plane of the sky appears superluminal. Therefore, an unified and simple interpretation to the new results is obtained, which can be further tested through its predictions on the evolution of ejecta. The study is of importance in the understanding of the nature of superluminal motion, the interaction of jets and surrounding materials, as well as the common physics underlying quasars and microquasars.