The bulk kinetic power of radio jets in active galactic nuclei

TL;DR

This study estimates the kinetic power of AGN jets using a jet model and observational data, revealing strong correlations with emission line luminosity and radio lobe emission, indicating a close link between accretion and jet activity.

Contribution

It introduces a method to estimate jet kinetic power from VLBI and X-ray data and demonstrates its correlation with emission line and radio lobe luminosities.

Findings

Strong correlation between emission line luminosity and jet kinetic power

Significant link between radio lobe emission and jet energy flux

Supports the connection between accretion processes and jet activity

Abstract

Based on the K\"onigl's inhomogeneous jet model, we estimate the jet parameters, such as bulk Lorentz factor $\Gamma$, viewing angle $\theta$ and electron number density $n_{\rm e}$ from radio VLBI and X-ray data for a sample of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) assuming that the X-rays are from the jet rather than the intracluster gas. The bulk kinetic power of jets is then calculated using the derived jet parameters. We find a strong correlation between the total luminosity of broad emission lines and the bulk kinetic power of the jets. This result supports the scenario that the accretion process are tightly linked with the radio jets, though how the disk and jet are coupled is not revealed by present correlation analysis. Moreover, we find a significant correlation between the bulk kinetic power and radio extended luminosity. This implies that the emission from the radio lobes are closely related with the energy flux transported through jets from the central part of AGNs.