Discovery of five low luminosity active galactic nuclei at the centre of the Perseus cluster

TL;DR

This study used VLBI observations to identify five low luminosity active galactic nuclei in the Perseus cluster, revealing parsec-scale jet activity linked to supermassive black holes despite minimal optical signs of activity.

Contribution

It provides the first VLBI detection of low luminosity AGNs in the Perseus cluster, demonstrating non-thermal radio emission from supermassive black holes in these galaxies.

Findings

Detected all five sources with high confidence at 1.4 GHz.

Radio emission is non-thermal, indicating jet activity.

No clear signs of nuclear activity in optical/infrared bands.

Abstract

According to optical stellar kinematics observations, an over-massive black hole candidate has been reported by van den Bosch et al. (2012) in the normal early-type galaxy NGC 1277. This galaxy is located in the central region of the Perseus cluster. Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT) observations have shown that NGC 1277 and other early-type galaxies in the neighbourhood have radio counterparts. These nuclear radio sources have stable flux densities on time scale of years. In order to investigate the origin of the radio emission from these normal galaxies, we selected five sources (NGC 1270, NGC 1272, NGC 1277, NGC 1278 and VZw 339) residing in the central 10 arcminute region of the Perseus cluster and requested to re-correlate the data of an existing very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) experiment at these new positions. With the re-correlation data provided by the European VLBI Network (EVN), we imaged the five sources with a resolution of about eight milliarcseconds and detected all of them with a confidence level above 5{\sigma} at 1.4 GHz. They show compact structure and brightness temperatures above $10^7$ K, which implies that the radio emission is non-thermal. We rule out ongoing nuclear star formation and conclude that these VLBI-detected radio sources are parsec-scale jet activity associated with the supermassive black holes in low luminosity active galactic nuclei (LLAGNs), although there are no clear signs of nuclear activity observed in the optical and infrared bands. Using the fundamental plane relation in black holes, we find no significant evidence for or against an extremely massive black hole hiding in NGC 1277.