Katherine Blundell (University of Oxford)

Episodic feedback from winds and jets in quasars and microquasars - Katherine Blundell Colloquium

ATNF Marsfield Lecture Theatre

Abstract

The immensely long timescales over which radio galaxies and quasars grow prohibit the kind of time-resolved studies that are possible for the Galactic relativistic-jet sources - the microquasars. However, combined studies of the same radio galaxies and quasars in both low-frequency radio and X-ray do reveal time-resolved information which enhances our understanding of the duty cycles and the episodic nature of the jet activity of these objects. I shall compare the intermittent nature of jet activity we now know about and present a growing collection of such results. I shall also present a new method for inferring energies and magnetic field strengths from such objects having curved synchrotron spectra, free from the usual degeneracies that afflict such calculations.