VLBA imaging of radio-loud Broad Absorption Line QSOs

TL;DR

This study uses VLBA imaging to investigate the small-scale radio structures of BAL QSOs, aiming to understand whether their compactness is due to orientation effects or intrinsic size, which informs models of the BAL phenomenon.

Contribution

First VLBA imaging of a sample of BAL QSOs to analyze their parsec-scale radio morphology and test hypotheses about their compactness origins.

Findings

BAL QSOs show diverse pc-scale morphologies.

Results suggest orientation effects play a significant role in observed compactness.

Data provide constraints on models of BAL QSO structure.

Abstract

Broad Absorption Line Quasars (BAL QSOs) have been found to be associated with extremely compact radio sources. These reduced dimensions can be either due to projection effects or these objects might actually be intrinsically small. Exploring these two hypotheses is important to understand the nature and origin of the BAL phenomenon because orientation effects are an important discriminant between the different models proposed to explain this phenomenon. In this work we present VLBA observations of 5 BAL QSOs and discuss their pc-scale morphology.