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Register a new userEvidence that the maximum electron energy in hotspots of FR II galaxies is not determined by synchrotron cooling
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It has been suggested that relativistic shocks in extragalactic sources may accelerate the highest energy cosmic rays. The maximum energy to which cosmic rays can be accelerated depends on the structure of magnetic turbulence near the shock but recent theoretical advances indicate that relativistic shocks are probably unable to accelerate particles to energies much larger than a PeV. We study the hotspots of powerful radiogalaxies, where electrons accelerated at the termination shock emit synchrotron radiation. The turnover of the synchrotron spectrum is typically observed between infrared and optical frequencies, indicating that the maximum energy of non-thermal electrons accelerated at the shock is < TeV for a canonical magnetic field of ~100 micro Gauss. Based on theoretical considerations we show that this maximum energy cannot be constrained by synchrotron losses as usually assumed, unless the jet density is unreasonably large and most of the jet upstream energy goes to non-thermal particles. We test this result by considering a sample of hotspots observed with high spatial resolution at radio, infrared and optical wavelengths.
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We study the hotspots of powerful radiogalaxies, where electrons accelerated at the jet termination shock emit synchrotron radiation. The turnover of the synchrotron spectrum is typically observed between infrared and optical frequencies, indicating that the maximum energy of non-thermal electrons accelerated at the shock is ~TeV for a canonical magnetic field of ~100 micro Gauss. We show that this maximum energy cannot be constrained by synchrotron losses as usually assumed, unless the jet density is unreasonably large and most of the jet upstream energy goes to non-thermal particles. We test this result by considering a sample of hotspots observed at radio, infrared and optical wavelengths.
It has been suggested that relativistic shocks in extragalactic sources may accelerate the most energetic cosmic rays. However, recent theoretical advances indicating that relativistic shocks are probably unable to accelerate particles to energies much larger than a PeV cast doubt on this. In the present contribution we model the radio to X-ray emission in the southern hotspot of the quasar 4C74.26. The synchrotron radio emission is resolved near the shock with the MERLIN radio-interferometer, and the rapid decay of this emission behind the shock is interpreted as the decay of the downstream magnetic field as expected for small scale turbulence. If our result is confirmed by analyses of other radiogalaxies, it provides firm observational evidence that relativistic shocks at the termination region of powerful jets in FR II radiogalaxies do not accelerate ultra high energy cosmic rays.
We present a systematic analysis of the extended X-ray emission discovered around 35 FR II radio galaxies from the revised Third Cambridge catalog (3CR) Chandra Snapshot Survey with redshifts between 0.05 to 0.9. We aimed to (i) test for the presence of extended X-ray emission around FR II radio galaxies, (ii) investigate if the extended emission origin is due to Inverse Compton scattering of seed photons arising from the Cosmic Microwave Background (IC/CMB) or to thermal emission from an intracluster medium (ICM) and (iii) test the impact of this extended emission on hotspot detection. We investigated the nature of the extended X-ray emission by studying its morphology and compared our results with low-frequency radio observations (i.e., $sim$150 MHz), in the TGSS and LOFAR archives, as well as with optical images from Pan-STARRS. In addition, we optimized a search for X-ray counterparts of hotspots in 3CR FR II radio galaxies. We found statistically significant extended emission ($>$3$sigma$ confidence level) along the radio axis for $sim$90%, and in the perpendicular direction for $sim$60% of our sample. We confirmed the detection of 7 hotspots in the 0.5 - 3 keV. In the cases where the emission in the direction perpendicular to the radio axis is comparable to that along the radio axis, we suggest that the underlying radiative process is thermal emission from ICM. Otherwise, the dominant radiative process is likely non-thermal IC/CMB emission from lobes. We found that non-thermal IC/CMB is the dominant process in $sim$70% of the sources in our sample, while thermal emission from the ICM dominates in $sim$15% of them.
SDSS J150243.09+111557.3 is a merging system at z = 0.39 that hosts two confirmed AGN, one unobscured and one dust-obscured, offset by several kiloparsecs. Deane et al. recently reported evidence from the European VLBI Network (EVN) that the dust-obscured AGN exhibits two flat-spectrum radio sources, J1502SE/SW, offset by 26 mas (140 pc), with each source being energized by its own supermassive black hole (BH). This intriguing interpretation of a close binary BH was reached after ruling out a double-hotspot scenario, wherein both hotspots are energized by a single, central BH, a configuration occuring in the well-studied Compact Symmetric Objects. When observed with sufficient sensitivity and resolution, an object with double hotspots should have an edge-brightened structure. We report evidence from the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) for just such a structure in an image of the obscured AGN with higher sensitivity and resolution than the EVN images. We thus conclude that a double-hotspot scenario should be reconsidered as a viable interpretation for J1502SE/SW, and suggest further VLBA tests of that scenario. A double-hotspot scenario could have broad implications for feedback in obscured AGNs. We also report a VLBA detection of high-brightness-temperature emssion from the unobscured AGN that is offset several kiloparsecs from J1502SE/SW.
We report results on deep Jansky Very Large Array A-configuration observations at 22 GHz of the hotspots of the radio galaxies 3C227 and 3C445. Synchrotron emission in the optical on scales up to a few kpc was reported for the four hotspots. Our VLA observations point out the presence of unresolved regions with upper limit to their linear size of about 100 pc. This is the first time that such compact components in hotspots have been detected in a mini-sample, indicating that they are not a peculiar characteristic of a few individual hotspots. The polarization may reach values up to 70 per cent in compact (about 0.1 kpc scale) regions within the hotspot, indicating a highly ordered magnetic field with size up to a hundred parsecs. On larger scales, the average polarization of the hotspot component is about 30-45 per cent, suggesting the presence of a significant random field component, rather than an ordered magnetic field. This is further supported by the displacement between the peaks in polarized intensity and in total intensity images that is observed in all the four hotspots. The electric vector position angle is not constant, but changes arbitrarily in the central part of the hotspot regions, whereas it is usually perpendicular to the total intensity contours of the outermost edge of the hotspot structure, likely marking the large-scale shock front. The misalignment between X-ray and radio-to-optical emission suggests that the former is tracing the current particle acceleration, whereas the latter marks older shock fronts.
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