DOI

https://doi.org/10.48717/5r30-za53

Project

EY036

Title

NGC1068-C

Abstract

Recently Wang et al. (2020) studied the nuclear dynamics of NGC 1068, and found that a close binary of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) is necessary for preventing the counter-rotating molecular disc (0.2 to 7 pc from the central AGN) from the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability catastrophe. Imaging the binary SMBHs need a resolution higher than 0.1 pc (a synthesized beam better than 1.4 mas). Although evidence points to that the nuclear component S1 is dominated by thermal free-free emission, the possibility of a fraction of the cm-wavelength radio emission of synchrotron origin is not fully excluded. We propose the EVN observations at 22 and 5 GHz to search for the radio jet in the nuclear region of NGC 1068, and to reveal the linear polarization from the AGN. The new 5 GHz data, in combination with the previous VLBA data in 1994-1996, enables to determine the jet proper motion over a time baseline of ~25 years. The morphology, polarization and kinematics studies are helpful for a better understanding of this archetypal Seyfert 2 galaxy.