English

The baryon loading effect on relativistic astrophysical jet transport in the interstellar medium

Plasma Physics 2018-09-24 v1 High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena

Abstract

The composition of the astrophysical relativistic jets remains uncertain. By kinetic particle-in-cell simulations, we show that the baryon component in the jet, or the so-called baryon loading effect (BLE), heavily affects relativistic jets transport dynamics in the interstellar medium. On the one hand, with the BLE, relativistic jets can transport in a much longer distance, because jet electrons draw a significant amount of energy from jet baryons via the Buneman-induced electrostatic waves and the Weibel-mediated collisionless shock; on the other hand, the jet electron phase space distribution may transform from a bottom-wide-single-peak structure to a center-wide-multiple-peak one by increasing the BLE, which largely influences the observed jet morphology. Implications for related astrophysical studies are also discussed.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1809.07922,
  title  = {The baryon loading effect on relativistic astrophysical jet transport in the interstellar medium},
  author = {W. P. Yao and B. Qiao and Z. Xu and H. Zhang and Z. H. Zhao and H. X. Chang and C. T. Zhou and S. P. Zhu and X. T. He},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1809.07922},
  year   = {2018}
}