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E. P. Smith, J. P. Gardner, S. R. Heap (LASP/GSFC/NASA), S. A. Baum, C. P. O'Dea (STScI)
Much progress has been made towards understanding the physics of extra-galactic jet flow in the past 10 years, through numerical modeling and detailed multi-frequency radio mapping. However, we still admit that basic parameters such as the magnetic field strength, the particle density, the bulk Lorentz factor and jet configuration (e.g., fast inner jet and slower outer sheath), and the nature and need for shocks remain unknown. However, by resolving the jets spectrally and spatially and pushing the observations to the higher energies with sufficient spatial resolution to resolve the cooling scale lengths, we can place unique constraints on the physical composition of, and acceleration mechanisms in, extra-galactic jets. The tightest constraints on the physics of jets come not from radio observations, but from observations in the optical, UV, and x-ray, where the lifetimes of the synchrotron emitting particles are measured in hundreds of years and the particles travel distances of hundreds of parsecs. To this end, we present radio through vacuum ultraviolet (STIS FUV-MAMA) spatially resolved images of the radio jet in 3C346 and use them examine the spatial variation of the spectral indices. Because the lifetime of the synchrotron radiating particles is inversely proportional to the observed frequency we can use the vastly different timescales (and therefore length scales) over which the radio (t~05-7 yr.) and ultraviolet (t~02-3 yr.) emitting particles cool to begin to place constraints on the magnetic field strengths. Also, the curvature of the spectrum as a function of position can be compared with aging models to constrain the magnetic field strength and to test the hypothesis that the magnetic field in radio jets may be substantially below equipartition (Heinz and Begelman 1997).