Mapping the Distribution of the Magnetic Field Strength along the NGC 315 Jet

Abstract

We study magnetic field strengths along the jet in NGC 315. First, we estimated the angular velocity of rotation in the jet magnetosphere by comparing the measured velocity profile of NGC 315 with the magnetohydrodynamic jet model proposed by Tomimatsu and Takahashi. Similar to the case of M87, we find that the model can reproduce the logarithmic feature of the velocity profile and suggest a slowly rotating black hole magnetosphere for NGC 315. By substituting the estimated Ω F into the jet power predicted by the Blandford–Znajek mechanism, we estimate the magnetic field strength near the event horizon of the central black hole as 5 × 103 G ≲ B H ≲ 2 × 104 G. We then estimate magnetic field strengths along the jet by comparing the spectral index distribution obtained from very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) observations with a synchrotron-emitting jet model. Then we constrain the magnetic field strength at a deprojected distance z from the black hole to be in the range 0.06 G ≲ B(z) ≲ 0.9 G for 5.2 × 103 r g ≲ z ≲ 4.9 × 104 r g , where r g represents the gravitational radius. By combining the obtained field strengths at the event horizon and the downstream section of the jet, we find that the accretion flow at the jet base is consistent with a magnetically arrested disk. We discuss a comparison of the jet power and the magnetic flux anchored to the event horizon in NGC 315 and M87.