Double hotspots and flow redirection in the lobes of powerful extragalactic radio sources

Abstract

Detailed observations of two powerful extragalactic radio sources that contain a prominent double hotspot in one of their two outer lobes are presented. These double hotspots display similar characteristics in both sources, suggesting a common mechanism for their formation. Several other examples of double hotspots are found in the literature that also display many of the characteristics of those in the present sources. These characteristics cannot easily be explained by beam-jitter models, in which secondary hotspots are interpreted as previous impact sites of a beam, which has moved on to form the primary in a new location. Instead, it is proposed that these double hotspots are caused by a flow of material from the more compact to the less compact of the two. It is found that the most probable cause of the outflow is a collision of a beam from the nucleus with a massive (100-million solar mass), dense (greater than 0.1/cm) cloud in intergalactic space. The details of the deflection process itself are unclear, but a possibility is that the beam inflates a bubble of very hot plasma inside the cloud, which then escapes through a weak point in the wall of the cloud. The existence of suchmore » intergalactic clouds is considered to be a strong possibility, based on the recent literature, as well as the present hotspot outflow arguments, despite the apparently extreme values postulated for their mass and density. 45 references.« less