YCAA Seminar, Probing structure and composition of extragalactic jets: the case of Centaurus A - Sarka Wykes, University of Manitoba

Event time: 
Tuesday, November 29, 2016 - 2:30pm to 3:30pm
Hours of operation: 

Coffee/tea and cookies will be served in the coffee lounge of 52HLH starting at 2 PM. Bring your own mug if you have!

Location: 
Watson (), A-51 See map
60 Sachem St
New Haven, CT 06511
Event description: 

Probing structure and composition of extragalactic jets: the case of Centaurus A

The origin of the structure and matter content of extragalactic jets are as yet underexplored. I will present results from hydrodynamical simulations of Centaurus A’s jet interacting with winds of its internal, ‘jetburned’ stars with a view to investigating, at high numerical resolution and analytically, the properties of shocks (bow shock and termination shock) generated in these interactions, and the wake structure tailing into the jet. I will also discuss outcomes of modelling of internal entrainment from stars intercepted by the jet, using stellar evolution- and wind codes, and codes calculating nucleosynthetic yields. The results from our modelling give a first prediction of abundances of the entrained material in an extragalactic jet on kpc scales, and they provide tools for estimating shock Mach number and the sizes of the obstructions in the jet which will tighten constraints on the nature of individual knots observed in Centaurus A. The possible role of material originating from the recently detected galactic fountain in Centaurus A, will be briefly addressed.