Astrophysical Jets and Their Engines

ISBN-13: 9789027725486 / Angielski / Twarda / 1987 / 256 str.

Wolfgang Kundt

Opis

This volume is the documentation of the first Course on 'Neutron Stars, Active Galactic Nuclei and Jets', of an Erice School with a wide astro- physical scope. The choice of the subject was made because of an apparent similari- ty - stressed already at earlier meetings - of four classes of astrophy- sical jet sources: Active Galactic Nuclei, Young Stellar Objects, Binary Neutron Stars and Binary White Dwarfs. They share important properties such as their morphology, high variability and large veloci- ty gradients as well as - with some inference - their broad spectrum, hypersonic outflow and core/lobe power ratio. Despite this apparent similarity of the four source classes, quite different models have been put forward for their description: (i) The central engine of active galactic nuclei has been generally thought to be a black hole, in contrast to the central engine of young stellar objects and cometary nebulae which apparently is a pre-T-Tauri star, some six orders of magnitude less compact, and to the central engine of planetary nebulae which mayor may not be a binary white dwarf. (ii) The elongated lobes, or flow patterns, have been often interpreted as highly directional stellar wind outflows whereas in a few well- mapped cases, the elongated flow appears to be 'pumped up' through a much narrower channel, or jet, both in the extragalactic and stellar sources.

Spis treści

The Sources and Their Models.- The Central Engine.- The Jets.- The Quasar Family — an Introduction and Taxonomy.- Our Galactic Center.- Jets in X-Ray Binaries.- T Tauri Stars, Pre-T Tauri Stars, and Stellar Jets.- The Physics and the Structure of Agn.- Improved Accretion Disk Models of Continuum Emission from Active Galactic Nuclei.- Velocities in Radio Galaxies and Quasars.- Polarization and Magnetic Field Structure.- Numerical Simulation of Jets.- The Gas Dynamics of Jets.- Cosmological Evolution of Active Galaxies and Quasars.- Unified Beaming Models and Compact Radio Sources.- Magnetic Equilibria of Jets.- Stability of Magnetic Jet Equilibria.- Dynamical Effects of Large-Scale Magnetic Fields in Jets.- Particle Acceleration in Astrophysical Jets.- Optical Synchrotron Emission from Radio Hot Spots.- General Relativistic Effects on Collimation of a Jet.- Some Studies on Giant Radio Galaxies.