Filamentary jets as a cosmic-ray "Zevatron"

Abstract

Strong, anisotropic turbulence reflecting magnetized filaments is considered, to model the diffusive acceleration of particles by shock waves in active galactic nucleus jets. We address that at knot A of the nearby M87 jet, the shock involving the filamentary turbulence can accelerate an iron nucleus to zetta-eV (ZeV; 10^{21} eV) ranges. A smaller value of the particle diffusion coefficient is found to be essential to achieve a ZeV cosmic-ray accelerator, a "Zevatron."

Comments: 5 pages, 2 color figures, emulateapj