Investigating the Origin of X-Ray Jets: A Case Study of Four Hybrid Morphology MOJAVE Blazars

Abstract

We carried out Chandra, Hubble Space Telescope (HST), and Very Large Array observations of four MOJAVE blazars that have previously been classified as hybrid (FR I/II) blazars in terms of radio morphology but not total radio power. The motivation of this study is to determine the X-ray emission mechanism in jets, these being different in FR I and FR II jets. We detected X-ray jet emission with sufficient signal to noise in two blazars, viz. PKS 0215+015 and TXS 0730+504. We carried out spectral energy distribution modeling of the broadband emission from the jet regions in these sources and found that a single synchrotron emission model is ruled out due to the deep upper limits obtained from HST optical and IR data. The inverse Compton-cosmic microwave background model can reproduce the X-ray jet emission in both sources although the model requires extreme jet parameters. Both our sources possess FR II-like radio powers and our results are consistent with previous studies suggesting that radio power is more important than FR morphology in determining the emission mechanism of X-ray jets.