Researchers from Russia studied the shape of the magnetic field of relativistic quasar jets. The scientists’ work has been published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Quasars are the most powerful sources of radiation in the universe. It is impossible to measure their magnetic fields directly, but scientists can investigate and restore using radio observations performed simultaneously on several antennas that make up one large radio telescope.
The basis of the work of astrophysicists from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, the Institute of Physics. PN Lebedev The Institute of Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory provided experimental data on more than 400 jets – jets of ionized plasma – active galaxies, obtained over 25 years. The scientists note that the data averaging effectively reveals the constant component of the launch’s magnetic field and stabilizes the variability over small time scales. Experts have shown that it takes about a decade of observations to restore the stable and most complete distribution of polarization on a jet.
Alexander Pushkarev, a lead investigator at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory and one of the researchers, FIAN, said analysis of the sources’ own “portraits” showed that the magnetic field of the quasar jets was a tightly twisted helix. According to him, this is indicated by a number of observed features: these are characteristic patterns of polarization vectors and a noticeable increase in the magnetic field’s alignment towards the ejection edges.
Source: Ferra
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