Discovery of a Flat-Spectrum Radio Nucleus in NGC 3115
J. M. Wrobel, K. Nyland

TL;DR
This paper reports the discovery of a flat-spectrum radio nucleus in NGC 3115, indicating a potential outflow near its supermassive black hole, which impacts accretion processes.
Contribution
It presents the first detection of a compact, flat-spectrum radio core in NGC 3115, linking radio emission to the galaxy's nucleus and outflow activity.
Findings
Detected a compact radio nucleus with flat spectrum in NGC 3115.
Radio emission coincides with the galaxy's photocenter and X-ray nucleus.
Radio-loud emission suggests presence of an outflow within 10 pc.
Abstract
The early-type galaxy NGC 3115, at a distance of 10.2 Mpc, hosts the nearest billion-solar-mass black hole. Wong et al. recently inferred a substantial Bondi accretion rate near the black hole. Bondi-like accretion is thought to fuel outflows, which can be traced through their radio emission. This paper reports the discovery of a radio nucleus in NGC 3115, with a diameter less that 0.17 arcsec (8.4 pc), a luminosity at 8.5 GHz of 3.1 x 10^35 ergs/s and a flat spectrum (alpha = -0.23+/-0.20, flux density ~ frequency^alpha). The radio source coincides with the galaxy's photocenter and candidate X-ray nucleus. The emission is radio-loud, suggesting the presence of an outflow on scales less than 10 pc. On such scales, the Bondi accretion could be impeded by heating due to disruption of the outflow.
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
