AGN jet physics and apparent opening angles
| Autor: | Matthew L. Lister, Tuomas Savolainen, Eric Clausen-Brown, Yuri Y. Kovalev, Alexander B. Pushkarev |
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| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2013 |
| Předmět: |
Physics
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE) Jet (fluid) Active galactic nucleus Astrophysics::High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena FOS: Physical sciences Magnetic reconnection Astrophysics Astrophysics::Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics Measure (mathematics) Lorentz factor symbols.namesake Very-long-baseline interferometry symbols High Energy Physics::Experiment Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena Astrophysics::Galaxy Astrophysics Luminosity function (astronomy) |
| Popis: | We present a new method to measure Gamma*theta_j in flux-limited samples of active galactic nuclei (AGN) jets, where Gamma is the bulk Lorentz factor and theta_j is the jet's half-opening angle. The Gamma*theta_j parameter is physically important for models of jet launching, and also determines the effectiveness of jet instabilities and magnetic reconnection. We measure Gamma*theta_j by analyzing the observed distribution of apparent opening angles in very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) flux-limited samples of jets, given some prior knowledge of the active galactic nuclei (AGN) radio luminosity function. We then apply this method to the MOJAVE flux-limited sample of radio loud objects and find Gamma*theta_j = 0.1 +- 0.03, which implies that AGN jets are subject to a variety of physical processes that require causal connection. 6 pages. Proceedings of the 11th EVN Symposium. Bordeaux (France), October 2012 |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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