Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Mar 2010
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010jsara...3...40n&link_type=abstract
Journal of the Southeastern Association for Research in Astronomy, vol. 3, p. 40.
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Quasars: Individual: Pks 1136-135, Galaxies: Active, Galaxies: Jets, Techniques: Polarimetric
Scientific paper
A prominent feature of many active galaxies is their relativistic jets. These jets emerge from the nucleus at speeds up to 99.9% of c and carry energy from the central regions out to distances of hundreds of kiloparsecs. The jets are composed of high-energy plasma that is known to emit via the synchrotron mechanism at radio through infrared energies. However, the emission mechanism is not well constrained at optical through X-ray energies, particularly for the most powerful jets, those located in luminous quasars. Multi-waveband observations of a few quasar jets have recently found that a common emission component connects the optical through X-ray bands. In these objects, optical polarimetry provides a powerful test for both the X-ray and optical emission mechanisms. Here we discuss imaging polarimetry of the jet of PKS 1136-135, a luminous quasar at z = 0.554, obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope. Our results show that different mechanisms dominate in the optical and X-rays for different regions of the jet. Knot A is highly polarized and so its optical and X-ray emission must be due to synchrotron radiation. However no significant polarization is detected in any other jet component, strongly indicating inverse-Comptonization of Cosmic Microwave Background photons as the optical-X-ray emission mechanism. The low polarization also independently rules out synchrotron self-Compton as the X-ray production mechanism in a model-independent way.
Niedzielski J. S.
Perlman Eric Steven
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