Knots in Magnetized Relativistic Jets and Their Simulations

Abstract

Bright features (`knots') in extragalactic jets are commonly associated with reheating of charged particles in regions with shocks or strong compression. We find a natural appearance of nozzles in simulations of toroidally magnetized jets, and propose this as a generic mechanism of knotted structures such as in the jet of 0800+608. Nozzles provide correlated enhancement of emission in radio and optical, such as discovered in HST observations of 3C273. The simulations reveal a rich structure of knots, including a nose cone with a propagating knotted structure and a hot-spot as the most extended brightness feature. Unexpected is the observed separation of the hot-spot from a composite Mach disk closer to the source.