A RECOLLIMATION SHOCK 80 mas FROM THE CORE IN THE JET OF THE RADIO GALAXY 3C 120: OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE AND MODELING

Abstract

We present Very Long Baseline Array observations of the radio galaxy 3C 120 at 5, 8, 12, and 15 GHz designed to study a peculiar stationary jet feature (hereafter C80) located ~80 mas from the core, which was previously shown to display a brightness temperature ~600 times larger than expected at such distances. The high sensitivity of the images—obtained between 2009 December and 2010 June—has revealed that C80 corresponds to the eastern flux density peak of an arc of emission (hereafter A80), downstream of which extends a large (~20 mas in size) bubble-like structure that resembles an inverted bow shock. The linearly polarized emission closely follows that of the total intensity in A80, with the electric vector position angle distributed nearly perpendicular to the arc-shaped structure. Despite the stationary nature of C80/A80, superluminal components with speeds up to 3 ± 1 c have been detected downstream from its position, resembling the behavior observed in the HST-1 emission complex in M87. The total and polarized emission of the C80/A80 structure, its lack of motion, and brightness temperature excess are best reproduced by a model based on synchrotron emission from a conical shock with cone opening angle η = 10°, jet viewing angle θ = 16°, a completely tangled upstream magnetic field, and upstream Lorentz factor γ u = 8.4. The good agreement between our observations and numerical modeling leads us to conclude that the peculiar feature associated with C80/A80 corresponds to a conical recollimation shock in the jet of 3C 120 located at a de-projected distance of ~190 pc downstream from the nucleus.