Katherine Blundell OBE

Abstract:

We report XMM-Newton observations of three FR II radio galaxies at redshifts between 0.85 and 1.34, which show extended diffuse X-ray emission within the radio lobes, likely due to inverse-Compton up-scattering of the cosmic microwave background. Under this assumption, through spectrum-fitting together with archival VLA radio observations, we derive an independent estimate of the magnetic field in the radio lobes of 3C 469.1 and compare it with the equipartition value. We find concordance between these two estimates as long as the turnover in the energy distribution of the particles occurs at a Lorentz factor in excess of ~ 250. We determine the total energy in relativistic particles in the radio emitting lobes of all three sources to range between 3e59 and 8e59 erg. The nuclei of these X-ray sources are heavily-absorbed powerful AGN.

Abstract:

We study the particle energy distribution in the cocoon surrounding Cygnus A, using radio images between 151 MHz and 15 GHz and a 200 ks Chandra ACIS-I image. We show that the excess low frequency emission in the the lobe further from Earth cannot be explained by absorption or excess adiabatic expansion of the lobe or a combination of both. We show that this excess emission is consistent with emission from a relic counterlobe and a relic counterjet that are being re-energized by compression from the current lobe. We detect hints of a relic hotspot at the end of the relic X-ray jet in the more distant lobe. We do not detect relic emission in the lobe nearer to Earth as expected from light travel-time effects assuming intrinsic symmetry. We determine that the duration of the previous jet activity phase was slightly less than that of the current jet-active phase. Further, we explain some features observed at 5 and 15 GHz as due to the presence of a relic jet.