1.4 GHz on the Fundamental Plane of Black Hole Activity

TL;DR

This study evaluates whether 1.4 GHz FIRST radio fluxes accurately trace nuclear activity in black holes and finds that contamination from extended components affects their reliability on the fundamental plane.

Contribution

It demonstrates that 1.4 GHz FIRST fluxes are heavily contaminated by non-nuclear emission, and only a subset of compact sources reliably follow the fundamental plane after correction.

Findings

Compact sources follow the fundamental plane when corrected for beaming.

Extended and environmental components contaminate FIRST fluxes, affecting their use.

LINERs, with negligible lobe contribution, also follow the fundamental plane.

Abstract

The fundamental plane of black hole activity is an empirical relationship between the OIII/X-ray luminosity depicting the accretion power, the radio luminosity as a probe of the instantaneous jet power and the mass of the black hole. For the first time, we use the 1.4 GHz FIRST radio luminosities on the optical fundamental plane, to investigate whether or not FIRST fluxes can trace nuclear activity. We use a SDSS-FIRST cross-correlated sample of 10149 active galaxies and analyse their positioning on the optical fundamental plane. We focus on various reasons that can cause the discrepancy between the observed FIRST radio fluxes and the theoretically expected core radio fluxes, and show that that FIRST fluxes are heavily contaminated by non-nuclear, extended components and other environmental factors. We show that the subsample of 'compact sources', which should have negligible lobe contribution, statistically follow the fundamental plane when corrected for relativistic beaming, while all the other sources lie above the plane. The sample of LINERs, which should have negligible lobe and beaming contribution, also follow the fundamental plane. A combined fit of the low-luminosity AGN and the X-ray binaries, with the LINERs, results in the relation log L$_R$ = 0.77 log L$_{OIII}$ + 0.69 log M. Assuming that the original fundamental plane relation is correct, we conclude that 1.4 GHz FIRST fluxes do not trace the pure 'core' jet and instantaneous nuclear activity in the AGN, and one needs to be careful while using it on the fundamental plane of black hole activity.