AAS Meeting #194 - Chicago, Illinois, May/June 1999
Session 62. High Angular Resolution Science with the NRAO Very Long Baseline Array
Topical, Oral, Wednesday, June 2, 1999, 8:30-10:00am, 10:45am-12:30pm, 2:00-3:30pm, 3:45-5:30pm, International Ballroom South

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[62.04] The Central Engines of Radio-Quiet Quasars

K. Blundell (U. Oxford)

Before high-resolution imaging of the faint radio emission from Radio-Quiet Quasars was possible, two rival hypotheses had been proposed for the origin of the radio flux in these RQQs: i) it represented emission from a circumnuclear starburst (e.g., Terlevich et al 1995 and Sopp & Alexander 1991) or ii) it was caused by radio jets with powers considerably lower than those of Radio-Loud Quasars with comparable luminosities in the other wavebands (Miller et al.\ 1993). Imaging with the VLBA has provided a definitive test between these rival hypotheses, since a mere detection of a RQQ with the VLBA implies extreme brightness temperature, hence excluding the hypothesis that a starburst could be the sole source of emission. Blundell & Beasley (1998) have used the VLBA to image a sample of RQQs and I will discuss both the implications of these detections and subsequent multi-epoch observations which indicate superluminal motion in one of these radio-quiet quasars, further pointing towards a fundamental link between radio-quiet and radio-loud quasars.


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