Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Jan 2012
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2012aas...21930507s&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #219, #305.07
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
The X-ray emission from extended, kpc-scale jets is commonly explained as inverse Compton scattering of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) by the same population of electrons that emit the GHz radio spectrum. The radio and X-ray flux densities, and the assumption of equipartition of magnetic and relativisitic particle energy density, give three constraints to estimate four quantities of interest: the magnetic field, relativistic electron density, bulk Lorentz factor, and angle of the jet to our line of sight. Additional assumptions, such as setting the Lorentz factor equal to the Doppler factor, are generally used, e.g., to deduce the kinetic flux along the jet. We allow the angle to the line of sight to be a free parameter, and suggest a new constraint on the Lorentz factor and therefore also the Doppler factor. As the Lorentz factor increases, the photons we receive are increasingly those emitted back towards the AGN nucleus in the jet rest frame. However the cone of enhanced CMB density lies increasingly in the opposite direction. Eventually these photons no longer fall in the small cone satisfying the head-on approximation, which is built into the expressions for inverse-Compton emissivity, and the emitted spectrum would no longer have the standard form. Accordingly, the data can be used to deduce an upper limit to the Lorentz factor as a function of the angle to the line of sight.
This research was funded in part by Chandra grant GO7-8107X
Birkinshaw Mark
Schwartz Daniel A.
Worrall Diana Mary
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