In the internal shock scenario, we argue that electrons in most kpc (or even
larger) scale jets can be accelerated to energies high enough to emit
synchrotron X-rays, if shocks exist on these scales. These high energy
electrons emit synchrotron radiation at high frequencies and cool as they
propagate downstream along the jet, emitting at progressively lower frequencies
and resulting in time lags and hence radio/X-ray (and optical/X-ray if the
optical knot is detectable) offsets at bright knots, with the centroids of
X-ray knots being closer to the core. Taking into account strong effects of jet
expansion, the behaviour of radio/X-ray and optical/X-ray offsets at bright
knots in M87, Cen A, 3C 66B, 3C 31, 3C 273, and PKS 1127-145 is consistent with
that of synchrotron time lags due to radiative losses. This suggests that the
large scale X-ray and optical jets in these sources are due to synchrotron
emission.Comment: 4 pages, Accepted for publication in ApJ Letter
