Constraining Electron Spectra in the Hotspots of Cygnus A with Spitzer

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy

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Scientific paper

Our new Spitzer data at 4.5 and 8 microns for the classical radio galaxy Cygnus A provide detections or upper limits for both the primary and secondary hotspots. Together with photometry from the literature (radio through X-rays), we find strong support for the notion that the western hotspot's infrared flux densities are reasonably consistent with an extrapolation of the radio data, whereas the eastern hotspots display characteristics of a high frequency cutoff of the synchrotron emission. The optical detections reported by Nilsson et al. (1997) for hotspots D and B are found to lie on the extrapolation of the X-ray spectra reported by Wright and Birkinshaw (2004). These high frequency spectral components are normally considered to come from synchrotron self-Compton (SSC) emission. The lower cutoff frequency for the eastern hotspot D (compared to A) is consistent with equipartition and SSC determinations of a stronger magnetic field strength for D. This work was partially supported by Spitzer grant 1279229.

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