Swift J1727.8–1613 Has the Largest Resolved Continuous Jet Ever Seen in an X-Ray Binary
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Multiwavelength polarimetry and radio observations of Swift J1727.8–1613 at the beginning of its recent 2023 outburst suggested the presence of a bright compact jet aligned in the north–south direction, which could not be confirmed without high-angular-resolution images. Using the Very Long Baseline Array and the Long Baseline Array, we imaged Swift J1727.8–1613 during the hard/hard-intermediate state, revealing a bright core and a large, two-sided, asymmetrical, resolved jet. The jet extends in the north–south direction, at a position angle of −0.60° ± 0.07° east of north. At 8.4 GHz, the entire resolved jet structure is <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mo>∼</mml:mo> <mml:mn>110</mml:mn> <mml:mo stretchy="false">(</mml:mo> <mml:mi>d</mml:mi> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo stretchy="true">/</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> <mml:mn>2.7</mml:mn> <mml:mspace width="0.25em"/> <mml:mi>kpc</mml:mi> <mml:mo stretchy="false">)</mml:mo> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo stretchy="true">/</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> <mml:mi>sin</mml:mi> <mml:mi>i</mml:mi> </mml:math> au long, with the southern approaching jet extending <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mo>∼</mml:mo> <mml:mn>80</mml:mn> <mml:mo stretchy="false">(</mml:mo> <mml:mi>d</mml:mi> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo stretchy="true">/</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> <mml:mn>2.7</mml:mn> <mml:mspace width="0.25em"/> <mml:mi>kpc</mml:mi> <mml:mo stretchy="false">)</mml:mo> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo stretchy="true">/</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> <mml:mi>sin</mml:mi> <mml:mi>i</mml:mi> </mml:math> au from the core, where d is the distance to the source and i is the inclination of the jet axis to the line of sight. These images reveal the most resolved continuous X-ray binary jet, and possibly the most physically extended continuous X-ray binary jet ever observed. Based on the brightness ratio of the approaching and receding jets, we put a lower limit on the intrinsic jet speed of β ≥ 0.27 and an upper limit on the jet inclination of i ≤ 74°. In our first observation we also detected a rapidly fading discrete jet knot 66.89 ± 0.04 mas south of the core, with a proper motion of 0.66 ± 0.05 mas hr −1 , which we interpret as the result of a downstream internal shock or a jet–interstellar medium interaction, as opposed to a transient relativistic jet launched at the beginning of the outburst.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".