Theoretical Modeling and Multiwavelength Observations of Powerful Quasar Jets
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Date
2018-01-01
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Department
Physics
Program
Physics, Applied
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Access limited to the UMBC community. Item may possibly be obtained via Interlibrary Loan thorugh a local library, pending author/copyright holder's permission.
This item is likely protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. Unless on a Creative Commons license, for uses protected by Copyright Law, contact the copyright holder or the author.
Abstract
The Chandra X-ray Observatory has discovered kpc-scale X-ray jets in many powerful quasars over the past 2 decades (Harris & Krawczynski, 2006). In many cases, these X-rays cannot be explained by the extension of the radio-optical spectrum produced by synchrotron-emitting electrons in the jet, since the observed X-ray flux is too high and/or the X-ray spectral index is too hard. A widely accepted model for the X-ray emission, first proposed by Celotti et al. (2001) and Tavecchio et al. (2000), posits that the X-rays are produced when relativistic electrons in the jet up-scatter ambient cosmic microwave background (CMB) photons via inverse-Compton scattering from microwave to X-ray energies (the IC/CMB model). However, modeling the X-ray emission in these jets with the IC/CMB model requires high levels of IC/CMB gamma-ray emission (Georganopoulos et al., 2006), which we have looked for using the Fermi/LAT gamma-ray space telescope. Another viable model for the large scale jet X-ray emission, favored by the results of Meyer et al. (2015) and Meyer & Georganopoulos (2014), is a second population of synchrotron-emitting electrons with up to multi-TeV energies. In contrast with the second synchrotron interpretation, the IC/CMB model requires jets with high kinetic powers (exceeding the Eddington luminosity in some cases), which remain highly relativistic (?~10) up to kpc scales. In this thesis, I will present recently obtained deep gamma-ray upper-limits from the Fermi/LAT which rule out the IC/CMB model in a large sample of sources previously modeled with IC/CMB, and discuss the properties of the growing sample of non-IC/CMB anomalous X-ray jets and the implications for jet energetics and environmental impact. Additionally, I will present a model for the GeV emission observed in powerful gamma-ray flaring blazars, thought to originate several pc away from the central engine.