What ignites optical jets?

Abstract

The properties of radio galaxies and quasars with and without optical or X-ray jets are compared. The majority of jets from which high-frequency emission has been detected so far (13 with optical emission, 11 with X-rays, 13 with both) are associated with the most powerful radio sources at any given redshift. It is found that optical/X-ray jet sources are more strongly beamed than the average population of extragalactic radio sources. This suggests that the detection or non-detection of optical emission from jets has so far been dominated by surface brightness selection effects, not by jet physics. It implies that optical jets are much more common than is currently appreciated.

4 pages, 2 figures, to appear in the proceedings of the workshop "Relativistic jets in the Chandra and XMM Era", Bologna 2002 (New AR); v2: corrected typo in the URL in the footnote on page 1. Unfortunately some change I do not understand has increased the arXiv version of the paper to 5 pages - get v1 to print but get v2 for the corrected URL; v3: corrected typo in typo fix from v2

References in corpus (5)

• X-ray Emission Processes in Radio Jets
• A new list of extra-galactic radio jets
• HST optical spectral index map of the jet of 3C 273
• X-rays from the jet in 3C 273: clues from the radio-optical spectra
• The HST survey of the B2 sample of radio galaxies: detection of two optical jets

Cited by in corpus (5)

• X-ray Emission Properties of Large Scale Jets, Hotspots and Lobes in Active Galactic Nuclei
• Black hole mass estimation with a relation between the BLR size and emission line luminosity of AGN
• Estimate black hole masses of AGNs using ultraviolet emission line properties
• Kiloparsec-Scale Jets in FR I Radio Galaxies and the Gamma-Ray Background
• Multifrequency Radiation of Extragalactic Large-Scale Jets