The correlation shown in Figure 3, the slow (zero) spreading rate of the jet, and the constant separation of the "rails" are consistent with a jet whose structure is approximately self-similar everywhere between J1 and J4. We therefore modeled the averaged transverse I and P profiles, rather than individual profiles, to improve our signal-to-noise.
We use coordinates in a cylindrical jet axisymmetric
about the z axis and inclined by angle i to the plane
of the sky. The jet is populated by relativistic electrons with a power-law
energy distribution, a specified emissivity distribution,
and a specified magnetic field geometry, including both organized and
random components. The transverse I, Q and U profiles are
computed by integrating 1301 equal cells along each of 131
equally-spaced lines of sight through the jet, and are then
convolved to the resolution of our data. We
matched the index of the power-law electron energy distribution
to the flattest spectral index associated with the jets
(
); our results are insensitive to this choice.
![]() Figure 4: Predicted transverse I and P profiles of the model with zero emissivity in the spine, whose boundary is here at r=26 (0.43 that of the jet), compared with the observed profiles. The model profiles have been convolved to the same ![]() |
Figure 4 shows the average transverse I and P profiles that we infer by assuming that the lobe magnetic field is perpendicular to both jets everywhere. These profiles are fitted well by a model (also shown) in which
The value of
in this model is a compromise
between the optimal fits for the jet and the counterjet.
For the jet, the ranges of parameters that fit the observed I
and P profiles within their 2
errors everywhere,
holding the other parameters fixed, are
The best-fitting values of
in the counterjet are
% smaller.
Such models with no emission from the jet "spine''
at predict the observed I profiles to within
their errors, but in detail the model profiles
are too edge-brightened. Better fits are obtained if the spine
also radiates, but with an emissivity less than half that of the
outer layer, and if the spine field has
.
The constraints imposed by fitting the I and P profiles
simultaneously are strong, so it is unlikely that
any fundamentally dissimilar models of magnetic field organization and
relative emissivity will fit our data so well. A smaller ratio of
to
can however be traded against orienting the
jet away from the plane of the sky to some extent: models with
as the only field component in the radiating layer can
reproduce the observed flat-topped I profiles, but
they over-predict the degree of linear polarization at the rail centers,
typically by a factor of two.
We also computed the emission from several well-ordered field structures previously proposed for large-scale jets, including helical fields and transverse self-similar "flux ropes'' (Chan & Henriksen 1980). We found none that simultaneously produced flat-topped I profiles and symmetric P profiles with ~ 20 to 30% polarization (Swain 1996).