Quasi-periodic oscillations of GHz-band polarization in a black hole

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Quasi-periodic oscillations of GHz-band polarization in a black hole

Authors

Wei Wang, Jiashi Chen, Pengfu Tian, Luis C. Ho, Xiaohui Sun, Pei Wang, Bing Zhang, Zheng Zheng, Xiao Chen, Ping Zhang, Haifan Zhu, Wen Yang, Botao Li

Abstract

Relativistic jets from accreting black holes (BHs) radiate non-thermal emission which is highly variable in different time scales. Magnetic fields anchored to a rotating BH or accretion disc accelerate and collimate jets of the BH systems. Previous studies on black holes of different mass scales, including supermassive and stellar-mass black holes, only report flux quasi-periodic oscillations in radio, optical, X-ray and gamma-ray bands. No quasi-periodic variations in polarization have yet been detected in any black hole systems. Here, we report the first detection of GHz radio polarization oscillations in GRS 1915+105, which harbors a spinning stellar-mass BH with a relativistic jet. Our observations show that during the increasing phase of radio emission, linear polarization and flux exhibit similar oscillation periods of $\sim 17$ and $33$ seconds, and their variation patterns anti-correlate with each other. These rare, short-period oscillations in both polarization and flux would be important to understand instabilities and special dynamics in magnetized jets.

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