1 research outputs found
Is the High-Energy Emission from Centaurus A Compton-Scattered Jet Radiation?
We consider whether the hard X-ray and soft gamma-ray emission from Centaurus
A is beamed radiation from the active nucleus which is Compton-scattered into
our line-of-sight. We derive the spectrum and degree of polarization of
scattered radiation when incident beamed radiation is scattered from a cold
() electron cloud moving with bulk relativistic motion along the
jet axis, and calculate results for an unpolarized, highly-beamed incident
power-law photon source. We fit the OSSE data from Centaurus A with this model
and find that if the scatterers are not moving relativistically, then the angle
the jet makes with respect to our line-of-sight is . We
predict a high degree of polarization of the scattered radiation below
keV. Future measurements with X-ray and gamma-ray polarimeters could
be used to constrain or rule out such a scenario.Comment: 12 pages, Postscript file with 3 Figures, NRL 017-331-09