The two-stage origin of bright rings in extended radio lobes

Abstract

A few strong radio sources show unusual large-intensity features (up to 100- or 200kpc scale) within their extended lobes. These appear in the plane of the sky as nearly circular rings, but physically they are actually spherical shells. Two such sources, Her A (3C 348) and 3C 310, are analysed in terms of their similarly uniform kine­ matics. Such objects do not easily fit into the Fanaroff-Riley scheme for jet and lobe sources. We model these sources by a two-stage account of their dynamics. Long ago, acoustic waves (or weak shocks) were excited again and again to form sphere after sphere in the pre-existing thermal galactic wind. They all arose at one spot along the jet axis at the edge of the galaxy, to drift with the wind, expanding uniformly at the speed of sound in the near-isothermal gas. The wind flows out supersonically at about Mach 5. In a much later second stage, a new and much faster flow of relativistic plasma is energized by the active nucleus deep within the galaxy. That plasma jet swiftly forms the radio lobe and infuses it with radio electrons. The new plasma fills in locally the low-pressure portions of each drifting acoustic shell. The shells then appear as a procession of radio rings, with modest intensity contrast and an understandable polarization.