The energetics of giant radio galaxy lobes from inverse Compton scattering observations

Abstract

Giant radio galaxy (GRG) lobes are excellent laboratories to study the evolution of the particle and B-field energetics. However, these results are based on assumptions of the shape and extension of the GRG lobe electron spectrum. We re-examine the energetics of GRG lobes as derived by inverse Compton scattering of CMB photons (ICS-CMB) by relativistic electrons in RG lobes to assess the physical conditions of RG lobes, their energetics and their radiation regime. We consider the GRG DA 240 recently observed by Suzaku as a reference case and we also discuss other RG lobes observed with Chandra and XMM. We model the spectral energy distribution of the DA 240 East lobe to get constraint on the shape and the extension of the electron spectrum in the lobe by using multi-frequency information from radio to gamma-rays. We use radio and X-ray data to constrain the shape and normalization of the electron spectrum and we then calculate the SZ effect expected in GRG lobes that is sensitive to the total electron energy density. We show that the electron energy density U_e derived form X-ray observations yields only a rough lower limit to its actual value and that most of the estimates of U_e based on X-ray measurements have to be increased even by a large factor by considering realistic estimates of the lower electron momentum p_1. This brings RG lobes away from the equipartition condition towards a particle-dominated and Compton power dominance regime. We use the distribution of RG lobes in the U_e/U_B vs. U_e/U_CMB plane as a further divide between different physical regimes of particle and field dominance, and radiation mechanism dominance in RG lobes. We conclude that the SZ effect produced by ICS-CMB mechanism observable in RG lobes provides reliable estimate of p_1 and U_e and is the best tool to determine the total energy density of RG lobes and to assess their physical regime.