Formation of internal shock waves in bent jets

Abstract

We discuss the circumstances under which the bending of a jet can generate an internal shock wave. The analysis is carried out for relativistic and non-relativistic astrophysical jets. The calculations are done by the method of characteristics for the case of steady simple waves. This generalises the non-relativistic treatment first used by Icke (1991). We show that it is possible to obtain an upper limit to the bending angle of a jet in order not to create a shock wave at the end of the curvature. This limiting angle has a value of 75 degrees for non-relativistic jets with a polytropic index k = 4/3, 135 degrees for non-relativistic jets with k = 5/3) and 50 degrees for relativistic jets with k = 5/3. We also discuss under which circumstances jets will form internal shock waves for smaller deflection angles.

11 pages, 6 figures, LaTeX. Accepted for publication in MNRAS

Cited by in corpus (9)

• 4C +12.50: A Superluminal Precessing Jet in the Recent Merger System IRAS 13451+1232
• PKS 1510-089: A Head-On View of a Relativistic Jet
• An Extremely Curved Relativistic Jet in PKS 2136+141
• Internal shocks in relativistic jets with time--dependent sources
• X-Ray-to-Radio Offset Inference from Low-Count X-Ray Jets
• A hydrodynamical model for the FERMI-LAT gamma-ray light curve of Blazar PKS1510-089
• Identifying compact symmetric objects with high-precision VLBI and Gaia astrometry
• Understanding the light curves of the HST-1 knot in M87 with internal relativistic shock waves along its jet
• Full analytical ultrarelativistic 1D solutions of a planar working surface