2012/07/18 by A. Meli, Athina Meli, P. L. Biermann +1
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Active galactic nucleus #Astrophysical jet #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Earth Systems and Cosmic Evolution #Energy spectrum #Flux (metallurgy) #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Jet (fluid) #Shock (circulatory) #Shock wave #Spectral index #Spectral line #astro-ph.CO #astro-ph.HE
paper · pdf · doi:10.1051/0004-6361/201016299
14 pages, submitted to A&A
arxiv created 2012/07/18 · openalex publication_date 2013/06/04 · arxiv updated 2015/06/05 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Context. Shocks in jets and hot spots of active galactic nuclei (AGN) are one prominent class of possible sources of very high-energy cosmic-ray particles (above 1018 eV). Extrapolating their spectrum to their plausible injection energy from some shock implies an enormous hidden energy for a spectrum of index ~−2. Some analyses suggest the particles’ injection spectrum at source to be as steep as −2.4 to −2.7, which exacerbates the problem, by a factor of 106. Nevertheless, it seems implausible that more than at the very best 1/3 of the jet energy goes into the required flux of energetic particles, thus one would need to allow for the possibility that there is an energy problem, which we would like to address in this work.