Acceleration of UHE Cosmic Ray Particles at Relativistic Jets in Extragalactic Radio Sources

TL;DR

This paper explores a new mechanism for accelerating ultra-high energy cosmic rays at the boundary of relativistic jets in extragalactic radio sources, supplementing traditional shock acceleration methods.

Contribution

It introduces a novel acceleration process at jet boundaries and models the resulting spectrum near the energy cutoff using Monte Carlo simulations.

Findings

Particles at jet boundaries dominate at highest energies

Spectrum modeling near the cutoff energy is achieved with Monte Carlo simulations

The proposed mechanism complements existing shock acceleration theories

Abstract

A mechanism of ultra-high energy (UHE) cosmic ray acceleration in extragalactic radio sources at the interface between the relativistic jet and the ambient medium is discussed as a supplement to the shock acceleration in `hot spots'. Particles accelerated at the jet side boundary are expected to dominate at highest energies. The spectrum formation near the cut-off energy is modeled using the Monte Carlo particle simulations.