29,610 research outputs found
Production of TeV gamma-radiation in the vicinity of the supermassive black hole in the giant radiogalaxy M87
Although the giant radiogalaxy M 87 harbors many distinct regions of
broad-band nonthermal emission, the recently reported fast variability of TeV
gamma rays from M 87 on a timescale of days strongly constrains the range of
speculations concerning the possible sites and scenarios of particle
acceleration responsible for the observed TeV emission. A natural production
site of this radiation is the immediate vicinity of the central supermassive
mass black hole (BH). Because of the low bolometric luminosity, the nucleus of
M 87 is effectively transparent for gamma rays up to energy of 10 TeV, which
makes this source an ideal laboratory for study of particle acceleration
processes close to the BH event horizon. We critically analyse different
possible radiation mechanisms in this region, and argue that the observed very
high-energy gamma ray emission can be explained by the inverse Compton emission
of ultrarelativistic electron-positron pairs produced through the development
of an electromagnetic cascade in the BH magnetosphere. We demonstrate, through
detailed numerical calculations of acceleration and radiation of electrons in
the magnetospheric vacuum gap, that this ``pulsar magnetosphere like'' scenario
can satisfactorily explain the main properties of TeV gamma-ray emission of M
87.Comment: 11 pages, ApJ, in prin
Conformal Symmetries of Adiabatic Modes in Cosmology
We remark on the existence of non-linearly realized conformal symmetries for
scalar adiabatic perturbations in cosmology. These conformal symmetries are
present for any cosmological background, beyond any slow-roll or quasi-de
Sitter approximation. The dilatation transformation shifts the curvature
perturbation by a constant, and corresponds to the well-known symmetry under
spatial rescaling. We argue that the scalar sector is also invariant under
special conformal transformations, which shift the curvature perturbation by a
term linear in the spatial coordinates. We discuss whether these conformal
symmetries can be extended to include tensor perturbations. Tensor modes
introduce their own set of non-linearly realized symmetries. We identify an
infinite set of large gauge transformations which maintain the transverse,
traceless gauge condition, while shifting the tensor mode non-trivially.Comment: 16 page
Serendipitous discovery of an extended X-ray jet without a radio counterpart in a high-redshift quasar
A recent Chandra observation of the nearby galaxy cluster Abell 585 has led
to the discovery of an extended X-ray jet associated with the high-redshift
background quasar B3 0727+409, a luminous radio source at redshift z=2.5. This
is one of only few examples of high-redshift X-ray jets known to date. It has a
clear extension of about 12", corresponding to a projected length of ~100 kpc,
with a possible hot spot located 35" from the quasar. The archival high
resolution VLA maps surprisingly reveal no extended jet emission, except for
one knot about 1.4" from the quasar. The high X-ray to radio luminosity ratio
for this source appears consistent with the amplification
expected from the inverse Compton radiative model. This serendipitous discovery
may signal the existence of an entire population of similar systems with bright
X-ray and faint radio jets at high redshift, a selection bias which must be
accounted for when drawing any conclusions about the redshift evolution of jet
properties and indeed about the cosmological evolution of supermassive black
holes and active galactic nuclei in general
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