Jets and environment of microquasars

Two relativistic X-ray jets have been detected with the Chandra X-ray observatory from the black hole X-ray transient XTE J1550-564. We report a full analysis of the evolution of the two jets with a gamma-ray burst external shock model. A plausible scenario suggests a cavity outside the central sour...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2008-06
Main Authors: Zhang, Shuang-Nan, Hao, JingFang
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Gamma rays
Interstellar matter
Jets
Microquasars
Morphology
Space telescopes
X ray telescopes
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Two relativistic X-ray jets have been detected with the Chandra X-ray observatory from the black hole X-ray transient XTE J1550-564. We report a full analysis of the evolution of the two jets with a gamma-ray burst external shock model. A plausible scenario suggests a cavity outside the central source and the jets first travelled with constant velocity and then are slowed down by the interactions between the jets and the interstellar medium (ISM). The best fitted radius of the cavity is \(\sim\)0.36 pc on the eastern side and \(\sim\)0.46 pc on the western side, and the densities also show asymmetry, of \(\sim\)0.015 cm\(^{-3}\) on the east to \(\sim\)0.21 cm\(^{-3}\) on the west. A large scale low density region is also found in another microquasar system, H 1743-322. These results are consistent with previous suggestions that the environment of microquasars should be rather vacuous, compared to the normal Galactic environment. A generic scenario for microquasar jets is proposed, classifying the observed jets into three main categories, with different jet morphologies (and sizes) corresponding to different scales of vacuous environments surrounding them.
ISSN:2331-8422