paper

Transformation of the Poynting flux into the kinetic energy in relativistic jets

arXiv:0909.4819 · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2009.15877.x

Abstract

The acceleration of relativistic jets from the Poynting to the matter dominated stage is considered. The are generally two collimation regimes, which we call equilibrium and non-equilibrium, correspondingly. In the first regime, the jet is efficiently accelerated till the equipartition between the kinetic and electro-magnetic energy. We show that after the equilibrium jet ceases to be Poynting dominated, the ratio of the electro-magnetic to the kinetic energy decreases only logarithmically so that such jets become truly matter dominated only at extremely large distances. Non-equilibrium jets remain generally Poynting dominated till the logarithmically large distances. In the only case when a non-equilibrium jet is accelerated till the equipartition level, we found that the flow is not continued to the infinity but is focused towards the axis at a finite distance from the origin.

Submitted to MNRAS Minor changes in the Conclusions

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