Open AccessModelling oscillations in the jet emission from microquasar GRS 1915+105
Author(s) -
Collins R. S.,
Kaiser C. R.,
Cox S. J.
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
monthly notices of the royal astronomical society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.058
H-Index - 383
eISSN - 1365-2966
pISSN - 0035-8711
DOI - 10.1046/j.1365-8711.2003.06100.x
Subject(s) - physics , astrophysics , flux (metallurgy) , jet (fluid) , infrared , electron , astronomy , mechanics , materials science , quantum mechanics , metallurgy
The variability in the infrared to millimetre emission from microquasar GRS 1915+105 is believed to be dominated by the system's relativistic jet. In this paper we develop a time‐dependent version of the jet emission model of Blandford & Königl and apply it to the oscillations in the infrared and millimetre emission from GRS 1915+105 observed recently by Fender & Pooley. The resulting model provides a reasonable description of the observed flux oscillations from GRS 1915+105. From a fit of the observed time lag between the flux peaks in the infrared and millimetre emission together with the flux normalization, we were able to determine the model parameters for the GRS 1915+105 jet. We find that to achieve the observed flux levels with the model requires an unphysically large electron density within the jet. We therefore conclude that the Blandford & Königl model cannot explain these observations, either because it does not provide the correct description of the emission from microquasar jets, or because the observed emission variations do not originate in the jet.