THE PROPAGATION OF RELATIVISTIC JETS IN EXTERNAL MEDIA

By O. Bromberg, E. Nakar, T. Piran, R. Sari. 2011

199 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Relativistic jets are ubiquitous in astrophysical systems that contain compact objects. They transport large amounts of energy to large distances from the source and their interaction with the ambient medium has a crucial effect on the evolution of the system. The propagation of the jet is characterized by the formation of a shocked “head” at the front of the jet which dissipates the jet's energy and a cocoon that surrounds the jet and potentially collimates it. We present here a self-consistent, analytic model that follows the evolution of the jet and its cocoon, and describes their interaction. We show that the critical parameter that determines the properties of the jet–cocoon system is the dimensionless ratio between the jet's energy density and the rest-mass energy density of the ambient medium. This parameter, together with the jet's injection angle, also determines whether the jet is collimated by the cocoon or not. The model is applicable to relativistic, unmagnetized jets on all scales and may be used to determine the conditions in active galactic nucleus (AGN) jets as well as in gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) or microquasars. It shows that AGN and microquasar jets are hydrodynamically collimated due to the interaction with the ambient medium, while GRB jets can be collimated only inside a star and become uncollimated once they break out.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d73b891c8a557312041e41aa3f759a6afdb96b90

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Bing Zhang
2. B. Metzger
3. E. Nakar
4. Pawan Kumar
5. T. Piran
6. A. Tchekhovskoy
7. E. Berger
8. A. Piro

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. Bing Zhang
2. E. Nakar
3. B. Metzger
4. Pawan Kumar
5. T. Piran
6. A. Tchekhovskoy
7. O. Bromberg
8. A. Piro

Citations in the corpus

• Hyper-Eddington accretion flows on to massive black holes (2015, background): “The outflows and jets possibly penetrate through the inflow in a narrow conical region as in gamma-ray bursts (e.g. Matzner 2003; Bromberg et al. 2011; Suwa & Ioka 2011; Matsumoto et al. 2015) and carry away a large fraction of the gas and radiation energy.”
• Relativistic MHD simulations of core-collapse GRB jets: 3D instabilities and magnetic dissipation (2015, methodology): “…the cocoon breaks out of the star, and feasibly leads to a different type of burst, which may resemble a low-luminosity GRB (Kulkarni et al. 1998; MacFadyen et al. 2001; Tan et al. 2001; Wang et al. 2007; Waxman et al. 2007; Katz et al. 2010; Bromberg et al. 2011; Nakar & Sari 2012; Nakar 2015).”
• Optical and X-ray emission from stable millisecond magnetars formed from the merger of binary neutron stars (2013, methodology): “…note that the time required for a jet of luminosityL j and (fixed) opening angleθ to drill through an envelope of radiusRej and massMej is given by (Bromberg et al. 2011) tbo ≈ 0.17 ( Lj 1047erg s−1 )−1/3 ( θ 30◦ )4/3 ( Rej 1013cm )2/3 ( Mej 0.01M⊙ )1/3 hr (1) If we apply this to the expanding…”
• Off-axis emission of short γ-ray bursts and the detectability of electromagnetic counterparts of gravitational-wave-detected binary mergers (2016, background): “The first (Morsony, Lazzati & Begelman 2007; Bromberg et al. 2011) assumes that the jet transversal size is obtained by equating the ram pressure of the jet material with the pressure of the cocoon.”
• The cocoon emission - an electromagnetic counterpart to gravitational waves from neutron star mergers (2017, background): “As the jet interacts with the ejecta it forms a double shock structure at its head (Matzner 2003; Bromberg et al. 2011).”
• The physics of gamma-ray bursts & relativistic jets (2014, background): “…Giannios (2006); Giannios and Spruit (2007); Ioka et al. (2007); Pe’er (2008); Asano and Terasawa (2009); Lazzati et al. (2009); Lazzati and Begelman (2010); Toma et al. (2011b); Mizuta et al. (2011); Nagakura et al. (2011); Bromberg et al. (2011a); Mészáros and Rees (2011); Ito et al. (2013).”
• THE OBSERVABLE SIGNATURES OF GRB COCOONS (2016, methodology): “Various authors (Kulkarni et al. 1998; Tan et al. 2001; MacFadyen et al. 2001; Campana et al. 2006; Wang et al. 2007; Katz et al. 2010; Nakar & Sari 2010; Bromberg et al. 2011a) suggested that the emission from the shock breakout of chocked jets’ cocoons produce the low luminosity GRBs (llGRBs).”
• RELATIVISTIC SHOCK BREAKOUTS—A VARIETY OF GAMMA-RAY FLARES: FROM LOW-LUMINOSITY GAMMA-RAY BURSTS TO TYPE Ia SUPERNOVAE (2011, methodology): “At the point that the jet reaches the steep density drop (i.e. r ∼ R∗/2) its velocity approaches the speed of light and it is narrowly collimated to an angle of ∼ θ20 (Bromberg et al. 2011).”