On the Physical Conditions in AGN Optical Jets

Abstract

The energy budget of all known optical jets is discussed. It is found that to power the extended radio lobes of radio galaxies, the jet bulk motion on kpc scales must be relativistic, on average. Based on various constraints, a ``most probable'' region centered around bulk Lorentz factor ~7.5 and jet inclination \~20 degrees is found. Because of the consequent relativistic beaming, the rest frame magnetic field is lower and electron lifetimes longer. Combining the effects of time dilation and lower emission rate, the electron diffusion length becomes fully consistent with the deprojected jet length, without the need for reacceleration.

To appear in the proceeding of "Lifecycle of Radio Galaxies" symposium, New Astronomy Review, in press Typos corrected. In particular, in the expression for dE/dt (section 2 line 6), B should be squared

References in corpus (2)

• HST Observations of the Optical Jets of PKS 0521-365, 3C371, and PKS 2201+044
• Deep WFPC2 and Ground-based Imaging of a Complete Sample of 3C Quasars and Galaxies

Cited by in corpus (16)

• X-ray Emission Properties of Large Scale Jets, Hotspots and Lobes in Active Galactic Nuclei
• A survey of extended radio jets with Chandra and HST
• Are quasar jets dominated by Poynting flux?
• Black hole mass estimation with a relation between the BLR size and emission line luminosity of AGN
• High Energy gamma-rays From FR I Jets
• The radio-ultraviolet spectral energy distribution of the jet in 3C273
• Estimate black hole masses of AGNs using ultraviolet emission line properties
• Large Scale Extragalactic Jets in the Chandra era I: data reduction and analysis
• Chandra Reveals Twin X-ray Jets in the Powerful FR-II Radio Galaxy 3C353
• Kiloparsec-Scale Jets in FR I Radio Galaxies and the Gamma-Ray Background
• Detection of Optical Synchrotron Emission from the Radio Jet of 3C279
• The HST survey of the B2 sample of radio galaxies: detection of two optical jets
• What ignites optical jets?
• An optical-IR jet in 3C133
• Multifrequency Radiation of Extragalactic Large-Scale Jets
• New Detections of Optical Emission from Kiloparsec-scale Quasar Jets