Speaker
Description
The last decade has witnessed a flurry of observational studies
concerning the rare class of radio loud narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies
(RL-NLSY1), of which several hundred are currently known. Much of
this activity was sparked by the unexpected detection of several
RL-NLSY1 by the Fermi gamma-ray observatory in 2009. The flux
variability seen in gamma-rays suggested the presence of a powerful,
aligned relativistic jet, which has subsequently been confirmed in
several cases by VLBA milliarcsecond-scale radio imaging. In this
review I discuss several outstanding issues raised by recent pc- and
kpc-scale radio observations of RL-NLSY1s. Specifically these involve
how low black hole mass, high accretion rate systems can produce
powerful jets, the potential for unifying RL-NLSY1s with other AGN
types on the basis of orientation, the possible contamination of
radio flux in RL-NLSY1s from star formation, and whether these rare
objects may represent a young AGN population. I will additionally
present updated pc-scale jet kinematics analyses of several RL-NLSY1s
from the MOJAVE VLBA monitoring program.
| Grant | no |
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