VLTI-GRAVITY observations of blazars

TL;DR

This study demonstrates the potential of near-infrared interferometry with VLTI-GRAVITY to spatially resolve the compact jet emission in blazars, marking a first in this wavelength regime.

Contribution

First attempt to spatially resolve near-infrared emission in blazar jets using VLTI-GRAVITY, showing feasibility and future prospects with improved instruments.

Findings

Detected unresolved or partially resolved jet-base in blazar Ton 599.

Wide-field mode faced challenges with faint targets, leading to non-detections.

Future observations with upgraded instruments could enable detailed imaging of blazar jets.

Abstract

Parsec-scale jets of blazars have so far been spatially resolved only in millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths, where very long baseline interferometry can be used to obtain milliarcsecond-scale images of the jets. We have attempted to spatially resolve the near-infrared emission in jet-dominated blazars for the first time. We used the VLTI-GRAVITY instrument to obtain milliarcsecond-scale near-infrared interferometric observations of a flaring blazar Ton 599. Additionally, we observed four non-flaring blazars using the GRAVITY-wide mode, where a nearby bright star is used as a fringe tracker. We modeled the squared visibilities of Ton 599 and found that they are incompatible with a single unresolved point source unless there is a significant amount of additional unknown coherence loss in the instrument. With the present data, we cannot distinguish between a model with an unresolved point source and extended emission or coherence loss and a model with a single Gaussian component. This suggests that we are seeing the unresolved or only partially resolved jet-base in near-infrared wavelengths. The wide-field mode of GRAVITY was challenging for the additional relatively faint targets, resulting in either non-detections or poor-quality data that could not be modeled. Our observations demonstrate that it is possible to detect the compact jet emission in blazars with near-infrared interferometry, suggesting that with the improved GRAVITY+ instrument it will be possible to spatially resolve and image the near-infrared emission of blazar jets.