Observational Effects of Anomalous Boundary Layers in Relativistic Jets

Abstract

Recent theoretical work has pointed out that the transition layer between a jet an the medium surrounding it may be more complex than previously thought. Under physically realizable conditions, the transverse profile of the Lorentz factor in the boundary layer can be non-monotonic, displaying the absolute maximum where the flow is faster than at the jet spine, followed by an steep fall off. Likewise, the rest-mass density, reaches an absolute minimum (coincident with the maximum in Lorentz factor) and then grows until it reaches the external medium value. Such a behavior is in contrast to the standard monotonic decline of the Lorentz factor (from a maximum value at the jet central spine) and the corresponding increase of the rest-mass density (from the minimum reached at the jet core). We study the emission properties of the aforementioned anomalous shear layer structures in kiloparsec-scale jets aiming to show observable differences with respect to conventional monotonic and smooth boundary layers.

32 pages, 9 figures (1 in color), accepted in ApJ

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• Magnetohydrodynamic Effects in Propagating Relativistic Jets: Reverse Shock and Magnetic Acceleration
• Chandra Reveals Twin X-ray Jets in the Powerful FR-II Radio Galaxy 3C353
• Linear Theory of the Rayleigh-Taylor Instability at a Discontinuous Surface of a Relativistic Flow
• Shocks in relativistic transverse stratified jets, a new paradigm for radio-loud AGN
• Shear Acceleration in Expanding Flows
• Magnetization of Relativistic Current-Carrying Jets with Radial Velocity Shear