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[118.02] On The Origin of Nuclear X-Ray Emission in Radio Galaxies

D. A. Evans, D. M. Worrall, M. Birkinshaw (University of Bristol), M. J. Hardcastle (University of Hertfordshire), R. P. Kraft (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), O. C. H. Shorttle (University of Bristol)

The physical origin of continuum X-ray emission in the cores of radio galaxies is widely debated. We present spectral results from Chandra and XMM-Newton observations of a sample of low-redshift (z < 0.1) 3CRR radio galaxies, and consider whether the emission originates from the base of a relativistic jet, an accretion flow, or contains contributions from both. Our analysis finds correlations between the X-ray, radio, and optical luminosities of X-ray components with low intrinsic hydrogen column densities (N_H), implying a common origin in the form of a jet. Several sources contain components with high intrinsic N_H whose X-ray luminosities are not as expected from the correlations. These X-ray components are more likely to be accretion-dominated. For jet-dominated sources, we generally find that a hidden AGN component of order 10⁴¹ ergs s^-1 is not excluded by the data, allowing the possibility of both components being present at varying levels in all radio galaxies.

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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 36 5
© 2004. The American Astronomical Society.