Hints of High Core Faraday Rotations from a Joint Analysis of VLBA and Optical Polarization Data

TL;DR

This study investigates the relationship between radio and optical polarization in AGNs, revealing potential high Faraday rotations in VLBA cores that affect polarization alignment interpretations.

Contribution

It provides a joint analysis of VLBA and optical polarization data, highlighting the possibility of extremely high Faraday rotations in AGN cores that were previously unaccounted for.

Findings

Most BL Lac objects show aligned radio and optical polarization after correction.

Some quasars do not show polarization alignment, suggesting different emission regions.

High Faraday rotations of tens of thousands of rad/m^2 may exist in VLBA cores, affecting polarization measurements.

Abstract

Although the continua of radio-loud Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) are typically dominated by synchrotron radiation over virtually the entire spectrum, it is not clear whether the radio and higher-frequency emission originate in the same or different parts of the jet. Several different radio--optical correlations based on polarization data have been found recently, suggesting that the optical and radio polarization may be closely related, and that the corresponding emission regions may be cospatial (Gabuzda et. al2006, Jorstad et al. 2007, D'Arcangelo et al. 2007) Our joint analysis of optical and VLBA polarization data for a sample of about 40 AGNs shows that, after correction for the inferred VLBA core Faraday rotations, most BL Lac objects and some quasars have aligned VLBA-core and optical polarizations, although many quasars also show no obvious relationship between their VLBA-core and optical polarization angles. This may indicate that not all AGNs have cospatial regions of optical and radio emission in their jets. However, another possibility is that some of the 7mm-2cm VLBA cores have Faraday rotations of the order of several tens of thousand of rad/m^2, which were not properly fit by our three-frequency data due to n*pi ambiguities in the observed polarization angles, leading to incorrect subtraction of the effects of the core Faraday rotation, and so incorrect "zero-wavelength" radio polarization angles. The possibility of such high core Faraday rotations is supported by the results of the parsec-scale Faraday-rotation studies of Zavala & Taylor (2004) and Jorstad et al. (2007).