Optical spectroscopy of the VHE flat-spectrum radio quasar PKS 0903-57

Abstract

We report new optical spectroscopic results for the gamma-ray blazar PKS~0903$-$57. The optical properties of this source have historically been complicated to establish, due to a bright foreground star separated from the blazar by only 0.67$^{\prime\prime}$. During its strong high-energy (HE) and very high-energy (VHE) gamma-ray flaring period between 2020 and 2022, the Southern African Large Telescope and Very Large Telescope (VLT) took spectra of its optical counterpart. Photometric monitoring with the Rapid Eye Mount (REM) telescope complemented the observations. The observational results were inconclusive. A major improvement was achieved with a repeat of the VLT observations in 2024 using a 0.5$^{\prime\prime}$ slit under excellent seeing conditions. This led to the detection of five narrow emission features in the spectra, yielding a robust redshift measurement of $z$ = 0.2621 $\pm$ 0.0006. We also detected a broad symmetric H$\alpha$ emission component with a full width at half maximum of 4020 $\pm$ 30 km/s in the spectra. Non-thermal jet emission was found to dominate the continuum, supporting the classification of PKS~0903$-$57 as a flat-spectrum radio quasar. Another interesting observation was a significant velocity displacement of $\sim$1500~km/s between the broad H$\alpha$ line and its corresponding narrow line. Such a displacement may be associated with unusual dynamics in the broad-line region or accretion flow, a system containing two supermassive black holes, or a recoiling black hole produced following a supermassive black-hole merger. Building on these results, we carried out additional VLT, REM, and \emph{Swift} observations towards the end of 2024 and during 2025. We present in this paper the preliminary results from the analysis of these new data.