Recent Progress in Understanding the Large Scale Jets of Powerful Quasars
| dc.contributor.author | Georganopoulos, Markos | |
| dc.contributor.author | Meyer, Eileen T. | |
| dc.contributor.author | Perlman, Eric S. | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2020-08-24T18:11:49Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2020-08-24T18:11:49Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2016-11-23 | |
| dc.description.abstract | Our understanding of the physics of kpc-scale quasar jets had seemed to converge to a paradigm in which these jets are as highly relativistic on the kpc scale as they are on sub-pc scales close to the central black hole. Retaining bulk Lorentz factors (Γ) on the order of 10–20 at these distances implies a jet power comparable to or higher than their Eddington luminosity. We recently started challenging this paradigm, which was put in place to explain the surprisingly bright X-ray emission of the knots of many quasar jets as inverse Compton scattering off the cosmic microwave background (IC/CMB). We have shown that the knot X-ray emission of the archetypical jets 3C 273 and PKS 0637-752 is not due to IC/CMB. With IC/CMB disfavored, an alternative interpretation for the X-rays is synchrotron radiation from a second population of electrons accelerated in situ up to ∼100 TeV. These results are the first step towards resolving the long-standing issue of the nature of the X-ray emission in powerful quasar jets. Comprehensive observational and theoretical work on essentially all X-ray-detected large-scale quasar jets to test the IC/CMB model over a much larger population needs to be done to examine the implications of slower jets that are extremely efficient accelerators. A fascinating case can be made that—contrary to popular belief—the total radiative power of the large-scale jet of these sources is comparable to that of the quasar core. Even more so, the angle-integrated TeV output of these (previously thought TeV-quiet) quasar jets likely makes them the dominant class among active galactic nuclei (AGN), exceeding the TeV production of so-called TeV blazars. | en_US |
| dc.description.sponsorship | The authors acknowledge support from NASA/ADAP grant NNX15AE55G. E.S.P. acknowledges support from grants HST-GO-13764.001, HST-GO-13676.003, Chandra GO3-14113A and HST-GO-13114.01. E.T.M. acknowledges support from NASA/Fermi grant 81051. | en_US |
| dc.description.uri | https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4434/4/4/65 | en_US |
| dc.format.extent | 8 pages | en_US |
| dc.genre | journal articles | en_US |
| dc.identifier | doi:10.13016/m2sfjm-hoe6 | |
| dc.identifier.citation | Georganopoulos, Markos; Meyer, Eileen T.; Perlman, Eric S. 2016. "Recent Progress in Understanding the Large Scale Jets of Powerful Quasars." Galaxies 4, no. 4: 65, https://doi.org/10.3390/galaxies4040065 | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://doi.org/10.3390/galaxies4040065 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/11603/19503 | |
| dc.language.iso | en_US | en_US |
| dc.publisher | MDPI | en_US |
| dc.relation.isAvailableAt | The University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) | |
| dc.relation.ispartof | UMBC Physics Department Collection | |
| dc.relation.ispartof | UMBC Faculty Collection | |
| dc.relation.ispartof | UMBC Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology (JCET) | |
| dc.rights | 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. | |
| dc.rights | Attribution 4.0 International | * |
| dc.rights.uri | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ | * |
| dc.title | Recent Progress in Understanding the Large Scale Jets of Powerful Quasars | en_US |
| dc.type | Text | en_US |