Determining the Composition of Relativistic Jets from Polarization Maps

Abstract

We present a stationary, axisymmetric, self-similar semi-analytic model of magnetically dominated jet plasma based on force-free regions of a relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulation. We use this model to illustrate how the composition of relativistic jet plasma can be determined, with special attention to the example of M87. In particular, we compute synthetic Stokes maps in e-e+p plasmas with various positron-to-proton ratios using synchrotron emission models scaling the partial pressure of electrons and positrons emitting at the observed frequency to the magnetic pressure, taking into account Faraday rotation and conversion. The lepton-dominated models produce bilaterally asymmetric radio intensity profiles with strong linear polarization and Stokes Q and U maps that are bilaterally asymmetric (but strongly up-down correlated) and antisymmetric (and sometimes up-down anticorrelated), respectively. The hadronic models produce more centrally brightened intensity and polarization maps. Circular polarization provides the cleanest observational tool for distinguishing the plasmas, as it increases outward from the jet core and central axis for highly ionic plasma, and is suppressed for pair dominated plasma. We find a measurable degree of circular polarization V/I of O(10e-3) for sub-equipartition hadronic jet plasmas. Our stationary model predicts that the intensity-normalized autocorrelation functions of Q and U increase and decrease with frequency, respectively. On the other hand, the autocorrelation of V is less sensitive to the frequency. Multi-band polarimetric observations could therefore be used as a novel probe of the composition of jet plasma.

arXiv comment24 pages, 12 figures, 2 versions

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Cited by in corpus (15)

• First M87 Event Horizon Telescope Results. VIII. Magnetic Field Structure near The Event Horizon
• First Sagittarius A* Event Horizon Telescope Results. V. Testing Astrophysical Models of the Galactic Center Black Hole
• First M87 Event Horizon Telescope Results. IX. Detection of Near-horizon Circular Polarization
• Black Hole Magnetic Fields and Their Imprint on Circular Polarization Images
• Unraveling Twisty Linear Polarization Morphologies in Black Hole Images
• Using Machine Learning to Link Black Hole Accretion Flows with Spatially Resolved Polarimetric Observables
• Positron Effects on Polarized Images and Spectra from Jet and Accretion Flow Models of M87* and Sgr A*
• Signatures of Black Hole Spin and Plasma Acceleration in Jet Polarimetry
• How Spatially Resolved Polarimetry Informs Black Hole Accretion Flow Models
• The content of astrophysical jets
• Polarimetric Geometric Modeling for mm-VLBI Observations of Black Holes
• Illuminating Black Hole Shadow with Dark Matter Annihilation
• Investigating the Disk-Jet Structure in M87 through Flux Separation in the Linear and Circular Polarization Images
• PATOKA: Simulating Electromagnetic Observables of Black Hole Accretion
• From electrons to Janskys: Full stokes polarized radiative transfer in 3D relativistic particle-in-cell jet simulations