The Chandra view of extended X-ray emission from Pictor A

Abstract

We discuss the extended X-ray emission seen in three archival Chandra observations, and one archival XMM-Newton observation, of the FRII radio galaxy Pictor A. The overall properties of the X-ray lobes are consistent with the conclusions of earlier workers that the extended X-ray emission is largely due to the inverse-Compton process, and the implied departure from equipartition is in the range seen by us in other sources. In detail, we show that the X-ray/radio flux ratio varies quite strongly as a function of position throughout the source, and we discuss possible implications of this observation for the spatial variation of electron energy spectra and magnetic field strength through the lobe. We show that the radio and X-ray properties of the lobe are not consistent with a simple model in which variations in the magnetic field strength alone are responsible for the observed differences between emission at different frequencies. We also discuss the origins of the extended emission seen around the eastern hotspot, arguing that it may be diffuse synchrotron radiation tracing a region of distributed particle acceleration, and the implications of a possible weak X-ray counterjet detection which, taken together with the other properties of the bright X-ray jet, leads us to suggest that the X-ray jet and possible counterjet are also produced by synchrotron emission.