Borowski, E.S., Hynes, R.I., Hunt, Q., Tetarenko, A.J., Plotkin, R.M., Shahbaz, T., Gandhi, P., Maccarone, T.J., Miller-Jones, J.C.A., Heinke, C.O., Shaw, A.W., Russell, T.D., Sivakoff, G.R., Charles, P.A., Palaiologou, E.V. and Reig, P. (2025) The mid-infrared emitting jet in the black hole V404 Cygni in quiescence. The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 991 (2), [L31]. (doi:10.3847/2041-8213/ae0322).
Abstract
Observations of some quiescent black hole X-ray binaries have revealed an excess of mid-infrared (MIR) emission above that expected from their donor stars. In one system, V404 Cygni, this excess has been variously suggested to arise from the accretion disk, circumbinary material, or a compact relativistic jet. Here we present simultaneous James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), and complementary multi-wavelength observations undertaken to resolve this uncertainty. We observed large-amplitude 21 $\mu$m variability on short timescales with JWST, particularly a dramatic flare which swiftly rose to $\approx2.4$ mJy, over 10 times the lowest observed MIR flux density. Similar variability was simultaneously observed from radio to X-ray wavelengths with other facilities throughout the campaign. This variability and the flat radio/mm/MIR spectral index ($\alpha = 0.04 \pm 0.01$) suggest that the MIR excess at and longward of 21 $\mu$m in V404 Cyg does not arise from the accretion disk or circumbinary material. Instead, the emission at 21 $\mu$m is dominated by synchrotron radiation from a jet which persists into quiescence. This result reinforces the ubiquity of the disk-jet connection in accreting black holes across a range of masses and accretion rates.
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