Detection of X-ray Emission from the Eastern Radio Lobe of PICTOR A

Abstract

The XMM-Newton satellite has revealed extended X-ray emission from the eastern radio lobe of the Fanaroff-Riley II Radio Galaxy Pictor A. The X-ray spectrum, accumulated on a region covering about half the entire radio lobe, is well described by both a thermal model and a power law. The X-ray emission could be thermal and produced by circum-galactic gas shocked by the expanding radio lobe or, alternatively, by Inverse Compton (IC) of cosmic microwave background photons by relativistic electrons in the lobe. The latter possibility seems to be supported by the good agreement between the lobe-average synchrotron radio index and the X-ray energy slope. However, if this is the case, the magnetic field, as deduced from the comparison of the IC X-ray and radio fluxes, is more than a factor 2 below the equipartition value estimated in the same X-ray region.