Multi-scale Radio and X-ray Structure of the High-redshift Quasar PMN J0909+0354

TL;DR

This study presents multi-scale radio and X-ray observations of the high-redshift quasar PMN J0909+0354, revealing a bent jet structure from parsec to kiloparsec scales and exploring potential interactions with nearby features.

Contribution

The paper provides new high-resolution EVN observations confirming the inner jet direction and details of the jet structure across scales, along with multi-wavelength analysis of the quasar's environment.

Findings

Jet bends by ~30° between parsec and kiloparsec scales.

Inner jet traced up to ~0.25 kpc from the core.

Extended infrared emission suggests possible interaction with nearby objects.

Abstract

The high-redshift quasar PMN J0909+0354 ($z=3.288$) is known to have a pc-scale compact jet structure, based on global 5-GHz very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) observations performed in 1992. Its kpc-scale structure was studied with the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) in the radio and the Chandra space telescope in X-rays. Apart from the north-northwestern jet component seen in both the VLA and Chandra images at $2.3''$ separation from the core, there is another X-ray feature at $6.48''$ in the northeastern (NE) direction. To uncover more details and possibly structural changes in the inner jet, we conducted new observations at 5 GHz using the European VLBI Network (EVN) in 2019. These data confirm the northward direction of the one-sided inner jet already suspected from the 1992 observations. A compact core and multiple jet components were identified that can be traced up to $\sim0.25$ kpc projected distance towards the north, while the structure becomes more and more diffuse. A comparison with arcsec-resolution imaging with the VLA shows that the radio jet bends by $\sim30^\circ$ between the two scales. The direction of the pc-scale jet as well as the faint optical counterpart found for the newly-detected X-ray point source (NE) favors the nature of the latter as a background or foreground object in the field of view. However, the extended ($\sim160$ kpc) emission around the positions of the quasar core and NE detected by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) in the mid-infrared might suggest physical interaction of the two objects.