Flare-like variability of the Mg II\lambda 2800\AA\ emission line in the gamma-ray blazar 3C 454.3

Bibliographic Details
Title: Flare-like variability of the Mg II\lambda 2800\AA\ emission line in the gamma-ray blazar 3C 454.3
Authors: León-Tavares, J., Chavushyan, V., Patiño-Álvarez, V., Valtaoja, E., Arshakian, T. G., Popovic\altaffilmark, L. C., Tornikoski, M., Lobanov, A., Carramiñana, A., Carrasco, L., Lähteenmäki, A.
Publication Year: 2013
Collection: Astrophysics
Subject Terms: Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena, Astrophysics - Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
More Details: We report the detection of a statistically significant flare-like event in the Mg II\lambda 2800\AA\ emission line of 3C 454.3 during the outburst of autumn 2010. The highest levels of emission line flux recorded over the monitoring period (2008 - 2011) coincide with a superluminal jet component traversing through the radio core. This finding crucially links the broad-emission line fluctuations to the non-thermal continuum emission produced by relativistically moving material in the jet and hence to the presence of broad-line region clouds surrounding the radio core. If the radio core were located at several parsecs from the central black hole then our results would suggest the presence of broad-line region material outside the inner parsec where the canonical broad-line region is envisaged to be located. We briefly discuss the implications of broad-emission line material ionized by non-thermal continuum on the context of virial black hole mass estimates and gamma-ray production mechanisms.
Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, to appear in ApJL
Document Type: Working Paper
DOI: 10.1088/2041-8205/763/2/L36
Access URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/1301.3064
Accession Number: edsarx.1301.3064
Database: arXiv
More Details
DOI:10.1088/2041-8205/763/2/L36