Type of Document Dissertation Author Choi, Eunwoo Author's Email Address echoi@chara.gsu.edu URN etd-04232007-155724 Title Numerical Hydrodynamics of Relativistic Extragalactic Jets Degree Ph.D. Department Physics and Astronomy Advisory Committee
Advisor Name Title Paul J. Wiita Committee Chair D. Michael Crenshaw Committee Member Douglas R. Gies Committee Member H. Richard Miller Committee Member Xiaochun He Committee Member Keywords
- Extragalactic jets
- Hydrodynamics
- Numerical methods
- Special relativity
Date of Defense 2007-02-26 Availability unrestricted Abstract This dissertation describes a multidimensional relativistic hydrodynamic code whichsolves the special relativistic hydrodynamic equations as a hyperbolic system of conservation
laws based on the total variation diminishing (TVD) scheme. Several standard tests and test
simulations are presented to demonstrate the accuracy, robustness and flexibility of the code.
Using this code we have studied three-dimensional hydrodynamic interactions of relativistic
extragalactic jets with two-phase ambient media. The deflection angle of the jet is influenced
more by the density contrast of the cloud than by the beam Mach number of the jet, and a
relativistic jet with low relativistic beam Mach number can eventually be slightly bent after
it crosses the dense cloud. Relativistic jet impacts on dense clouds do not necessarily destroy
the clouds completely, and much of the cloud body can survive as a coherent blob due to
the combination of the geometric influence of off-axis collisions and the lower rate of cloud
fragmentation through the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability for relativistic flows. We find that
relativistic jets interacting with clouds can produce synchrotron emission knots similar to
structures observed in many VLBI-scale radio sources and the synchrotron emission peaks
right before the jet passes through the cloud.
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