Kinematics of SS433 radio jets: interaction of jets with ambient medium

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the interaction between SS433's precessing radio jets and the surrounding medium affects jet dynamics, highlighting the importance of jet-medium interactions in interpreting jet behavior.

Contribution

It provides an analysis of jet-medium interaction effects on jet kinematics using synchrotron brightness profiles, addressing discrepancies in models and observations.

Findings

Jet-medium interaction causes observable jet deceleration and twisting.

The interaction's magnitude can explain deviations from simple kinematic models.

Implications for the applicability of optical-based kinematic models to radio jets.

Abstract

The problem of the interaction between the precessing mildly relativistic radio jets of SS433 and an ambient medium has been often invoked in interpretations of the jets behaviour. The dynamical interaction could be responsible for disagreements between the kinematic model and observations of the jets. To estimate the relative ram pressure of the jet and impinging matter we used the profile along the radio jets of brightness of synchrotron radiation. From this we estimated magnitude of possible deceleration and twisting of the jets, and compare model locus of the jets with observations. The magnitude is enough big to be observed, that addresses an applicability of the kinematic model, based mostly on the optical observations, to the radio jets and a problem of the kinematic distance to the object in particular.