Hydrodynamic Simulations of a Relativistic Jet Interacting with the Intracluster Medium: Application to Cygnus A

Abstract

The Fanaroff–Riley Class II radio galaxy Cygnus A hosts jets that produce radio emission, X-ray cavities, cocoon shocks, and X-ray hotspots, where the jet interacts with the ICM. Surrounding one hotspot is a peculiar “hole” feature, which appears as a deficit in X-ray emission. We used relativistic hydrodynamic simulations of a collimated jet interacting with an inclined interface between lobe and cluster plasma to model the basic processes that may lead to such a feature. We found that the jet reflects off of the interface into a broad, turbulent flow back out into the lobe, which is dominated by gas stripped from the interface at first and from the intracluster medium itself at later times. We produced simple models of X-ray emission from the ICM, the hotspot, and the reflected jet to show that a hole of emission surrounding the hotspot as seen in Cygnus A may be produced by Doppler de-boosting of the emission from the reflected jet, as seen by an observer with a sight line nearly along the axis of the outgoing material.

Keywords

• active galactic nuclei
• numerical simulations
• X-ray observations
• radio observations
• jets
• hydrodynamics