3 mm GMVA Observations of Total and Polarized Emission from Blazar and Radio Galaxy Core Regions

TL;DR

This study uses 3 mm VLBI imaging to explore the innermost regions of AGN jets in blazars and radio galaxies, revealing finer jet features and analyzing polarization calibration methods.

Contribution

It provides high-resolution 3 mm VLBI images of AGN jets, offering new insights into their inner structures and polarization calibration techniques.

Findings

Higher angular resolution reveals jet features not seen at 7 mm.

Comparison of calibration methods improves polarization accuracy.

Identifies potential sites of gamma-ray emission in AGN jets.

Abstract

We present total and linearly polarized 3 mm Global mm-VLBI Array images of a sample of blazars and radio galaxies from the VLBA-BU-BLAZAR 7 mm monitoring program designed to probe the innermost regions of active galactic nuclei (AGN) jets and locate the sites of gamma-ray emission observed by the Fermi-LAT. The lower opacity at 3 mm and improved angular resolution, on the order of 50 microarcseconds, allow us to distinguish features in the jet not visible in the 7 mm VLBA data. We also compare two different methods used for the calibration of instrumental polarisation and we analyze the resulting images for some of the sources in the sample.