We study the interaction of early-type stars with the jets of active galactic nuclei. A bow-shock will form as a consequence of the interaction of the jet with the winds of stars and particles can be accelerated up to relativistic energies in these shocks. We compute the non-thermal radiation produced by relativistic electrons from radio to gamma-rays. This radiation may be significant, and its detection might yield information on the properties of the stellar population in the galaxy nucleus, as well as on the relativistic jet. This emission is expected to be relevant for nearby non-blazar sources.
Dense populations of stars surround the nuclear regions of galaxies. In active galactic nuclei, these stars can interact with the relativistic jets launched by the supermasive black hole. In this work, we study the interaction of early-type stars with relativistic jets in active galactic nuclei. A bow-shaped double-shock structure is formed as a consequence of the interaction of the jet and the stellar wind of each early-type star. Particles can be accelerated up to relativistic energies in these shocks and emit high-energy radiation. We compute, considering different stellar densities of the galactic core, the gamma-ray emission produced by non-thermal radiative processes. This radiation may be significant in some cases, and its detection might yield valuable information on the properties of the stellar population in the galaxy nucleus, as well as on the relativistic jet. This emission is expected to be particularly relevant for nearby non-blazar sources.
Dense populations of stars surround the nuclear regions of galaxies. In this work, we study the interaction of a WR star with relativistic jets in active galactic nuclei. A bow-shaped double-shock structure will form as a consequence of the interaction of the jet and the wind of the star. Particles can be accelerated up to relativistic energies in these shocks and emit high-energy radiation. We compute the produced gamma-ray emission obtaining that this radiation may be significant. This emission is expected to be particularly relevant for nearby non-blazar sources.
The past decade has seen a large progress in the X-ray investigation of early-type galaxies of the local universe, and first attempts have been made to reach redshifts z>0 for these objects, thanks to the high angular resolution and sensitivity of the satellites Chandra and XMM-Newton. Major advances have been obtained in our knowledge of the three separate contributors to the X-ray emission, that are the stellar sources, the hot gas and the galactic nucleus. Here a brief outline of the main results is presented, pointing out the questions that remain open, and finally discussing the prospects to solve them with a wide area X-ray survey mission such as WFXT.
We have compared the parsec-scale jet linear polarization properties of the Fermi LAT-detected and non-detected sources in the complete flux-density-limited (MOJAVE-1) sample of highly beamed AGN. Of the 123 MOJAVE sources, 30 were detected by the LAT during its first three months of operation. We find that during the era since the launch of Fermi, the unresolved core components of the LAT-detected jets have significantly higher median fractional polarization at 15 GHz. This complements our previous findings that these LAT sources have higher apparent jet speeds, brightness temperatures and Doppler factors, and are preferentially found in higher activity states.
Stellar flares have been extensively studied in soft X-rays (SXR) by basically every X-ray mission. Hard X-ray (HXR) emission from stellar superflares, however, have only been detected from a handful of objects over the past years. One very extreme event was the superflare from the young M-dwarf DG CVn binary star system, which triggered Swift/BAT as if it was a $gamma$-ray burst (GRB). In this work, we estimate the expected $gamma$-ray emission from DG CVn and the most extreme stellar flares by extrapolating from solar flares based on measured solar energetic particles (SEPs), as well as thermal and non-thermal emission properties. We find that ions are plausibly accelerated in stellar superflares to 100 GeV energies, and possibly up to TeV energies in the associated coronal mass ejections. The corresponding $pi^0$-decay $gamma$-ray emission could be detectable from stellar superflares with ground-based $gamma$-ray telescopes. On the other hand, the detection of $gamma$-ray emission implies particle densities high enough that ions suffer significant losses due to inelastic proton-proton scattering. The next-generation Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) should be able to probe superflares from M-dwarfs in the solar neighbourhood and constrain the energy in interacting cosmic rays and/or their maximum energy. The detection of $gamma$-ray emission from stellar flares would open a new window for the study of stellar physics, the underlying physical processes in flares and their impact on habitability of planetary systems.