Mildly relativistic motion in the radio-quiet quasar PG 1351+640

Abstract

ABSTRACT Measuring the proper motion of the emission component in radio-quiet quasars (RQQs) could help to distinguish between the origins of the radio emission and to understand whether the jet production mechanism is the same in radio-loud quasars and RQQs. PG 1351+640 is one of the few RQQs suitable for proper motion studies: it has two compact components on milli-arcsec scales, a flat-spectrum core and a steep-spectrum jet; both components are ≳2 mJy at 5 GHz and are well suited for Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) observations. We compare recent VLBA observations with that made seventeen years ago and find no significant change in the core-jet separation between 2005 and 2015 (a proper motion of 0.003 mas yr−1). However, the core-jet separation increased significantly between 2015 and 2022, inferring a jet proper motion velocity of 0.063 mas yr−1, which corresponds to an apparent transverse velocity of $0.37\, c$ . The result suggests that the jet of the RQQ PG 1351+640 is mildly relativistic and oriented at a relatively small viewing angle.