The interaction of relativistic jets with their environment

While some of the energy supplied by AGNs to cluster atmospheres does go into shock heating, most of this energy goes into weak shocks-thus, gentle turbulent heating by buoyancy is competing with heating by weak shocks, not strong shocks. Carrying the analogy of jet-environment interactions over to microquasar jets, I argue that microquasars are, dynamically speaking, situated in much more tenuous atmospheres. While direct detection of microquasar radio lobe is difficult due to their low surface brightness, indirect detection from ejection dynamics and Chandra hot spots suggests that they are common. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.