Various radio galaxies show signs of having gone through episodic jet outbursts in the past. An example is the class of double-double radio galaxies (DDRGs). However, to follow the evolution of an individual source in real-time is impossible due to t
he large time scales involved. Numerical studies provide a powerful tool to investigate the temporal behavior of episodic jet outbursts in a (magneto-)hydrodynamical setting. We simulate the injection of two jets from active galactic nuclei (AGN), separated by a short interruption time. Three different jet models are compared. We find that an AGN jet outburst cycle can be divided into four phases. The most prominent phase occurs when the restarted jet is propagating completely inside the hot and inflated cocoon left behind by the initial jet. In that case, the jet-head advance speed of the restarted jet is significantly higher than the initial jet-head. While the head of the initial jet interacts strongly with the ambient medium, the restarted jet propagates almost unimpeded. As a result, the restarted jet maintains a strong radial integrity. Just a very small fraction of the amount of shocked jet material flows back through the cocoon compared to that of the initial jet and much weaker shocks are found at the head of the restarted jet. We find that the features of the restarted jet in this phase closely resemble the observed properties of a typical DDRG.
Current observations have shown that astrophysical jets reveal strong signs of radial structure. They suggest that the inner region of the jet, the jet spine, consists of a low-density, fast-moving gas, while the outer region of the jet consists of a
more dense and slower moving gas, called the jet sheath. Moreover, if jets carry angular momentum, the resultant centrifugal forces lead to a radial stratification. Current observations are not able to fully resolve the radial structure, so little is known about its actual profile. We present three AGN jet models in $2.5D$ of which two have been given a radial structure. The first model is a homogeneous jet, the only model that doesnt carry angular momentum; the second model is a spine-sheath jet with an isothermal equation of state; and the third jet model is a (piecewise) isochoric spine-sheath jet, with constant but different densities for jet spine and jet sheath. In this paper, we look at the effects of radial stratification on jet integrity, mixing between the different jet components and global morphology of the jet-head and surrounding cocoon.
