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A new model of emission from microquasar jets, and possible explanation to the outliers of the fundamental plane

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2011

Asaf Pe'er
Affiliation:
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA email: [email protected]
Piergiorgio Casella
Affiliation:
School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Southampton, Southampton, Hampshire, SO17 1BJ, UK
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Abstract

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We present a new model of emission from jets in microquasars, which implements elements from the study of jets in gamma-ray bursts to these objects. By assuming that electrons are accelerated once at the base of the jet to a power law distribution above a low energy Maxwellian, and are cooled by synchrotron emission and possible adiabatic energy losses along the jet, a wealth of spectra can be obtained. We show our theoretical results which can explain some of the key observations. In particular, we show that: (I) a flat radio spectrum, as is frequently seen, is a natural outcome of the model; (II) Strong magnetic field results in a flux decay in the optical/UV band as Fν ~ ν−1/2, irrespective of many of the uncertainties of the model. (III) An increase of the magnetic field above a critical value of ~105 G leads to a sharp decrease in the flux at the radio band, while the flux at higher frequencies saturates to a constant value. We conclude that scatter in the values of the magnetic field may provide a natural explanation to the observed scatter in the radio/X ray luminosity correlation seen in these objects.

Type
Contributed Papers
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2011

References

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