Related papers: Relativistic large scale jets and minimum power re…
Blazars are thought to emit highly-collimated outflows, so-called jets. By their close alignment to our line of sight, relativistic beaming effects enable us to observe these jets over the whole electromagnetic spectrum up to TeV energies,…
Advances in the capabilities of X-ray, gamma-ray and TeV telescopes have brought new information on the physics of relativistic jets, which are responsible for the blazar "phenomenon". In particular the broad band sensitivity of the…
The Chandra discovery of bright X-ray emission from kpc-scale jets provides us unprecedented insights into the physical state of the plasma in the flow. In particular it is possible to get good constraints on the power and pressure in…
High energy emission from blazars is thought to arise in a relativistic jet launched by a supermassive black hole. The emission site must be far from the hole and the jet relativistic, in order to avoid absorption of the photons. In extreme…
The power carried by the jet of blazars is large, compared to the luminosity produced by their accretion disk, and is probably in the form of kinetic energy of a normal electron-proton plasma. The Poynting flux is modest, as suggested by…
The origin of the high-energy emission in astrophysical jets from black holes is a highly debated issue. This is particularly true for jets from supermassive black holes that are among the most powerful particle accelerators in the…
We present new Chandra and HST data for four gamma-ray blazars selected on the basis of radio morphology with the aim of revealing X-ray and optical emission from their jets at large scales. All the sources have been detected. Spectral…
Extragalactic relativistic jets are engines able to carry out to large distances a huge amount of power, not only in the form of radiation, but especially in the form of kinetic energy of matter and fields. As such, they can be thought as…
Most of the electromagnetic output of blazars (BL Lac objects and Flat Spectrum Radio Quasars) comes out in the gamma-ray band, making the Large Area Telescope [0.1-100 GeV] onboard the Fermi satellite and the Cherenkov telescopes crucial…
We construct a numerical model of emission from minijets, localized flows driven by magnetic reconnection inside Poynting-flux-dominated jets proposed to explain the ultrafast variability of blazars. The geometrical structure of the model…
We discuss the physical properties of four quasar jets imaged with the Chandra X-ray Observatory in the course of a survey for X-ray emission from radio jets. These objects have sufficient counts to study their spatially resolved…
Accreting black holes produce powerful relativistic plasma jets which emit radiation across all observable wavelengths but the details of the initial acceleration and confinement of the jet are uncertain. We apply an innovative new model…
We review the statistical properties of relativistic Doppler boosting relevant for studies of relativistic jets from compact objects based on radio--X-ray(--mass) correlations, such as that found in black-hole X-ray binaries in the low/hard…
The Fermi, Swift and INTEGRAL satellites, together with ground based (especially Cherenkov) telescopes made possible a great progress in our understanding of relativistic jets. We can now start to attack the difficult questions of jet…
The convex (concave upward) high-energy X-ray spectra of the blazar PKS\,2155-304, observed by \emph{XMM-Newton}, is interpreted as the signature of sub-dominant inverse Compton emission. The spectra can be well fitted by a superposition of…
With its exquisite spatial resolution of better than 0.5 arcsecond, the Chandra observatory is uniquely capable of resolving and studying the spatial structure of extragalactic X-ray jets on scales of a few to a few hundred kilo-parsec. Our…
The dramatic relativistic jets pointing directly at us in BL Lac objects can be well modelled by bulk motion beaming of synchrotron self-Compton emission powered by a low Eddington fraction accretion flow. Nearly 500 of these AGN are seen…
Relativistic jets of active galactic nuclei have been known to exist for 100 years. Blazars with their jet pointing close to our line of sight are some of the most variable and extreme objects in the universe, showing emission from radio to…
Estimates on different scales of the power of relativistic bulk motion in extragalactic and galactic jets are presented. The power in the jets and the power produced by the accretion disk are found to be roughly equal. This may suggest an…
Relativistic jets of plasma are a key ingredient of many types of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN). Today we know that AGNs are powered by the accretion of inter stellar material into the gravitational field of a Super Massive Black Hole and…