Possible Detection of Apparent Superluminal inward motion in Markarian 421 after the Giant X-ray flare in February, 2010

TL;DR

This study used VLBI observations to investigate jet motions in blazar Mrk 421 after a major X-ray flare, finding evidence of apparent inward motion possibly caused by unresolved ejection events, consistent with spectral models.

Contribution

First VLBI follow-up after the 2010 flare revealing potential superluminal inward motion in Mrk 421's jet, suggesting new ejection activity not directly observed.

Findings

Detected a jet component with apparent inward motion at ~3.5c

No direct observation of a new component during the flare

Doppler factor of the unseen ejection estimated between 10 and 20

Abstract

We report on the VLBI follow-up observations using the Japanese VLBI Network (JVN) array at 22 GHz for the largest X-ray flare of TeV blazar Mrk 421 that occurred in mid-February, 2010. The total of five epochs of observations were performed at intervals of about 20 days between March 7 and May 31, 2010. No new-born component associated with the flare was seen directly in the total intensity images obtained by our multi-epoch VLBI observations. However, one jet component located at ~1 mas north-west from the core was able to be identified, and its proper motion can be measured as -1.66+/-0.46 mas yr^-1, which corresponds to an apparent velocity of -3.48+/-0.97 c. Here, this negative velocity indicates that the jet component was apparently moving toward the core. As the most plausible explanation, we discuss that the apparent negative velocity was possibly caused by the ejection of a new component, which could not be resolved with our observations. In this case, the obtained Doppler factor of the new component is around 10 to 20, which is consistent with the ones typically estimated by model fittings of spectral energy distribution for this source.