No Arabic abstract
Collimated outflows (jets) are ubiquitous in the universe appearing around sources as diverse as protostars and extragalactic supermassive blackholes. Jets are thought to be magnetically collimated, and launched from a magnetized accretion disk surrounding a compact gravitating object. We have developed the first laboratory experiments to address time-dependent, episodic phenomena relevant to the poorly understood jet acceleration and collimation region. The experimental results show the periodic ejections of magnetic bubbles naturally evolving into a heterogeneous jet propagating inside a channel made of self-collimated magnetic cavities. The results provide a unique view of the possible transition from a relatively steady-state jet launching to the observed highly structured outflows.
The results of MHD numerical simulations of the formation and development of magnetized jets are presented. Similarity criteria for comparisons of the results of laboratory laser experiments and numerical simulations of astrophysical jets are discussed. The results of laboratory simulations of jets generated in experiments at the Neodim laser installation are presented.
The use of Z-pinch facilities makes it possible to carry out well-controlled and diagnosable laboratory experiments to study laboratory jets with scaling parameters close to those of the jets from young stars. This makes it possible to observe processes that are inaccessible to astronomical observations. Such experiments are carried out at the PF-3 facility (plasma focus, Kurchatov Institute), in which the emitted plasma emission propagates along the drift chamber through the environment at a distance of one meter. The paper presents the results of experiments with helium, in which a successive release of two ejections was observed. An analysis of these results suggests that after the passage of the first supersonic ejection, a region with a low concentration is formed behind it, the so-called vacuum trace, due to which the subsequent ejection practically does not experience environmental resistance and propagates being collimated. The numerical modeling of the propagation of two ejections presented in the paper confirms this point of view. Using scaling laws and appropriate numerical simulations of astrophysical ejections, it is shown that this effect can also be significant for the jets of young stars.
Jets are observed in young stellar objects, X-ray sources, active galactic nuclei (AGN). The mechanisms of jet formation may be divided in regular, acting continuously for a long time, and explosive ones. Continuous mechanisms are related with electrodynamics and radiation pressure acceleration, hydrodynamical acceleration in the nozzle inside a thick disk, acceleration by relativistic beam of particles. Explosive jet formation is connected with supernovae, gamma ray bursts and explosive events in galactic nuclei. Mechanisms of jet collimation may be connected with magnetic confinement, or a pressure of external gas. Explosive formation of jets in the laboratory is modeled in the experiments with powerful laser beam, and plasma focus.
Photon breeding in relativistic jets involves multiplication of high-energy photons propagating from the jet to the external environment and back with the conversion into electron-positron pairs. The exponential growth of the energy density of these photons is a super-critical process powered by the bulk energy of the jet. The efficient deceleration of the jet outer layers creates a structured jet morphology with the fast spine and slow sheath. In initially fast and high-power jets even the spine can be decelerated efficiently leading to very high radiative efficiencies of conversion of the jet bulk energy into radiation. The decelerating, structured jets have angular distribution of radiation significantly broader than that predicted by a simple blob model with a constant Lorentz factor. This reconciles the discrepancy between the high Doppler factors determined by the fits to the spectra of TeV blazars and the low apparent velocities observed at VLBI scales as well as the low jet Lorentz factors required by the observed statistics and luminosity ratio of Fanaroff-Riley I radio galaxies and BL Lac objects. Photon breeding produces a population of high-energy leptons in agreement with the constraints on the electron injection function required by spectral fits of the TeV blazars. Relativistic pairs created outside the jet and emitting gamma-rays by inverse Compton process might explain the relatively high level of the TeV emission from the misaligned jet in the radio galaxies. The mechanism reproduces basic spectral features observed in blazars including the blazar sequence (shift of the spectral peaks towards lower energies with increasing luminosity). The mechanism is very robust and can operate in various environments characterised by the high photon density.
We study a possible mechanism for astrophysical jet production from a neutron star composed by a partially bosonized npe-gas. We obtain that the expulsion of a stable stream of matter might be triggered by the quantum magnetic collapse of one or various components of the gas, while its collimation is due to the formation of a strong self-generated magnetic field.