Variability of extragalactic X-ray jets on kiloparsec scales
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arXiv
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| Autori principali: | , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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| Natura: | Preprint |
| Pubblicazione: |
2023
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| _version_ | 1866911774461132800 |
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| author | Meyer, Eileen T. Shaik, Aamil Tang, Yanbo Reid, Nancy Reddy, Karthik Breiding, Peter Georganopoulos, Markos Chiaberge, Marco Perlman, Eric Clautice, Devon Sparks, William DeNigris, Nat Trevor, Max |
| author_facet | Meyer, Eileen T. Shaik, Aamil Tang, Yanbo Reid, Nancy Reddy, Karthik Breiding, Peter Georganopoulos, Markos Chiaberge, Marco Perlman, Eric Clautice, Devon Sparks, William DeNigris, Nat Trevor, Max |
| contents | Unexpectedly strong X-ray emission from extragalactic radio jets on kiloparsec scales has been one of the major discoveries of Chandra, the only X-ray observatory capable of sub-arcsecond-scale imaging. The origin of this X-ray emission, which appears as a second spectral component from that of the radio emission, has been debated for over two decades. The most commonly assumed mechanism is inverse Compton upscattering of the Cosmic Microwave Background (IC-CMB) by very low-energy electrons in a still highly relativistic jet. Under this mechanism, no variability in the X-ray emission is expected. Here we report the detection of X-ray variability in the large-scale jet population, using a novel statistical analysis of 53 jets with multiple Chandra observations. Taken as a population, we find that the distribution of p-values from a Poisson model is strongly inconsistent with steady emission, with a global p-value of 1.96e-4 under a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test against the expected Uniform (0,1) distribution. These results strongly imply that the dominant mechanism of X-ray production in kpc-scale jets is synchrotron emission by a second population of electrons reaching multi-TeV energies. X-ray variability on the time-scale of months to a few years implies extremely small emitting volumes much smaller than the cross-section of the jet. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2305_19408 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2023 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Variability of extragalactic X-ray jets on kiloparsec scales Meyer, Eileen T. Shaik, Aamil Tang, Yanbo Reid, Nancy Reddy, Karthik Breiding, Peter Georganopoulos, Markos Chiaberge, Marco Perlman, Eric Clautice, Devon Sparks, William DeNigris, Nat Trevor, Max High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics Unexpectedly strong X-ray emission from extragalactic radio jets on kiloparsec scales has been one of the major discoveries of Chandra, the only X-ray observatory capable of sub-arcsecond-scale imaging. The origin of this X-ray emission, which appears as a second spectral component from that of the radio emission, has been debated for over two decades. The most commonly assumed mechanism is inverse Compton upscattering of the Cosmic Microwave Background (IC-CMB) by very low-energy electrons in a still highly relativistic jet. Under this mechanism, no variability in the X-ray emission is expected. Here we report the detection of X-ray variability in the large-scale jet population, using a novel statistical analysis of 53 jets with multiple Chandra observations. Taken as a population, we find that the distribution of p-values from a Poisson model is strongly inconsistent with steady emission, with a global p-value of 1.96e-4 under a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test against the expected Uniform (0,1) distribution. These results strongly imply that the dominant mechanism of X-ray production in kpc-scale jets is synchrotron emission by a second population of electrons reaching multi-TeV energies. X-ray variability on the time-scale of months to a few years implies extremely small emitting volumes much smaller than the cross-section of the jet. |
| title | Variability of extragalactic X-ray jets on kiloparsec scales |
| topic | High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.19408 |