An investigation of variability and its associated synchrotron emission in relativistic AGN jets using numerical hydrodynamic simulations

Active regions at the centres of certain galaxies known as Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) are some of the most energetic and violent sources of emission in the universe. Certain types of AGN can produce jet-like emission structures that extend hundreds of kiloparsec in length. The jet-like sources show intricate time dependent structure and are believed to consist of collimated flows of relativistic plasma. Many studies have focused on investigating the structure and emission of these sources. The evolution time scale of the jets are much longer than their recorded history which makes observational studies of their evolution challenging and, due to the relativistic nature of these jets, they have not been accurately reproduced in laboratory experiments. Instead many studies have employed fluid dynamic numerical simulations of these sources to study their properties. To accurately compare a fluid dynamic simulation to that of observational data the emission emitted by such an environment must be modelled. In this study a fluid dynamic simulations of a relativistic jet is constructed and a synchrotron emission model is applied to the simulations to reproduce intensity maps at radio frequencies which is comparable to observational data of AGN jet sources. The numerical fluid dynamic simulation was created and evolved using the PLUTO software and consisted of a three dimensional environment containing ambient medium, into which a jet is injected through a nozzle on the lower z boundary. The injected material consisted of a less dense medium with a super-sonic bulk motion of Lorentz factor Γ = 10. The simulation reproduced a jet structure containing a relativistic beam of material propagating through the ambient medium. The beam of material was surrounded by a turbulent cocoon region with asymmetric structure. The entire structure was encased in a bow shock. Intensity maps of the three dimensional fluid simulation were created by applying a post-processing code to the simulation data. The emission model estimated the synchrotron emission by assuming that the entire population of electrons in the jet had a power-law energy distribution. The intensity maps were able to reproduce emission structures that resemble those of FR II type radio galaxies with a dominant cocoon region containing time dependent hot spots and filaments. To investigate the effects of Doppler boosting, intensity maps were calculated at different polar angles and the results were consistent with the current unified model of AGN and showed a significant increase in the intensity of the relativistic beam at small polar angels. The intensity maps were able to reproduce time dependent emission structures due to fluid dynamic instabilities that formed during the simulation. The time dependent structure led to the production of variability with an amplitude of ≈ 10% in the total intensity. It was therefore shown that some variability observed within these sources occurs due to fluid dynamic instabilities rather than a change in the injection parameters. However, large flares which have been observed from these sources require additional perturbations in the flow. This study serves as a good basis for future in depth investigation of AGN emission.