Synthetic Observations of Simulated Radio Galaxies I: Radio and X-ray Analysis

Details Synthetic Observations of Simulated Radio Galaxies I: Radio and X-ray Analysis Synthetic Observations of Simulated Radio Galaxies I: Radio and X-ray Analysis

2003-10-24

arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0310719v1

Astrophys.J. 601 (2004) 778-797

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

43 pages, 14 figures; accepted for publication in ApJ, v601 n2 February 1, 2004

Scientific paper

10.1086/380756

We present an extensive synthetic observational analysis of numerically- simulated radio galaxies designed to explore the effectiveness of conventional observational analyses at recovering physical source properties. These are the first numerical simulations with sufficient physical detail to allow such a study. The present paper focuses on extraction of magnetic field properties from nonthermal intensity information. Synchrotron and inverse-Compton intensities provided meaningful information about distributions and strengths of magnetic fields, although considerable care was called for. Correlations between radio and X-ray surface brightness correctly revealed useful dynamical relationships between particles and fields. Magnetic field strength estimates derived from the ratio of X-ray to radio intensity were mostly within about a factor of two of the RMS field strength along a given line of sight. When emissions along a given line of sight were dominated by regions close to the minimum energy/equipartition condition, the field strengths derived from the standard power-law-spectrum minimum energy calculation were also reasonably close to actual field strengths, except when spectral aging was evident. Otherwise, biases in the minimum- energy magnetic field estimation mirrored actual differences from equipartition. The ratio of the inverse-Compton magnetic field to the minimum-energy magnetic field provided a rough measure of the actual total energy in particles and fields in most instances, within an order of magnitude. This may provide a practical limit to the accuracy with which one may be able to establish the internal energy density or pressure of optically thin synchrotron sources.

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