ORIGIN OF RADIO EMISSION IN RADIO-QUIET QUASARS

Image Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

Radio emission of radio-quiet quasars may be due to stars formation in the quasar host galaxy, to a jet launched by the supermassive black hole, or to relativistic particles accelerated in a wide-angle radiatively-driven outflow.

Recently some authors (Zakamska et al 2016) examine whether radio emission from radio-quiet quasars is a byproduct of stair formation in their hosts. They find that even the most generously computed star formation rates are insufficient to explain the observed radio emission, by about an order of magnitude. They cannot distinguish between radio emission due to compact weak jets and radio emission due to wide angle winds. The problem of distinguishing radio emission from compact jets from radio emission as a bi-product of radiatively driven has proven espexially difficult because the two mechanisms are similar in terms of energetics.

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http://arxiv.org/pdf/1511.00013v2.pdf
http://mnras.oxfordjournals.org/content/455/4/4191.abstract

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