Relativistic Hotspots in FR II Radio Sources

Details Relativistic Hotspots in FR II Radio Sources Relativistic Hotspots in FR II Radio Sources

Jan 2011

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011aas...21714253c&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #217, #142.53; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 43, 2011

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

We present a list of six FR II radio sources that are candidates to possess hotspots with modestly relativistic (v/c > 0.2) bulk velocities, in contrast to the vast majority of FR II radio sources that possess non-relativistic hotspot bulk velocities (e.g., v/c = 0.03+/- 0.02 from Scheuer 1995). These objects display arm- length and flux-ratio asymmetries between lobes that self-consistently indicate relativistic motion. The candidates are selected from the FIRST 1.4 GHz survey (including but not limited to the catalog of FR II quasars of de Vries et al. 2006) with the requirement that the radio core have a spectroscopic SDSS counterpart. We find no significant difference in the number of neighboring sources within 300 projected kpc of the candidate sources and randomly selected nearby regions. The deprojected and light travel-time corrected lobe distances are not abnormal for FR II sources, and neither are the core-to-lobe flux ratios after correcting for lobe beaming. We briefly consider four possibilities for these type of objects: (i) environmental interactions randomly mimicking relativistic effects, (ii) a restarted jet causing the near hotspot to brighten while the far hotspot still appears faint, (iii) observation during a short interval common to FR II lifetimes during which the hotspot decelerates from relativistic to non-relativistic velocities, and (iv) innately unusual characteristics (e.g., a mass-loaded jet) driving relativistic bulk velocities in the hotspots of a small fraction (< 1%) of FR II objects. We favor the last interpretation but cannot rule out the alternatives. We also comment on the useful external constraints such objects provide to the evaluation of hotspot X-ray emission mechanisms.

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