Active galactic nuclei jet mass loading and truncation by stellar winds |
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| Authors: | A Hubbard E G Blackman |
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| Institution: | Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627, USA;Laboratory for Laser Energetics, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14623, USA |
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| Abstract: | Active galactic nuclei can produce extremely powerful jets. While tightly collimated, the scale of these jets and the stellar density at galactic centres implies that there will be many jet/star interactions, which can mass load the jet through stellar winds. Previous work employed modest wind mass outflow rates, but this does not apply when mass loading is provided by a small number of high mass-loss stars. We construct a framework for jet mass loading by stellar winds for a broader spectrum of wind mass-loss rates than has previously been considered. Given the observed stellar mass distributions in galactic centres, we find that even highly efficient (0.1 Eddington luminosity) jets from supermassive black holes of masses M BH? 104 M⊙ are rapidly mass loaded and quenched by stellar winds. For 104 M⊙ < M BH < 108 M⊙ , the quenching length of highly efficient jets is independent of the jet's mechanical luminosity. Stellar wind mass loading is unable to quench efficient jets from more massive engines, but can account for the observed truncation of the inefficient M87 jet, and implies a baryon-dominated composition on scales ?2 kpc therein even if the jet is initially pair plasma dominated. |
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| Keywords: | stars: mass-loss stars: winds outflows ISM: bubbles ISM: jets and outflows galaxies: active galaxies: jets |
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