Abstract:
We study the effect of plasma composition on the dynamics and morphology of relativistic astrophysical jets. Our
work is based on a relativistic total variation diminishing simulation code. We use a relativistic equation of state in
the simulation code that accounts for the thermodynamics of a multispecies plasma, which is a mixture of
electrons, positrons, and protons. To study the effect of plasma composition, we consider various jet models. These
models are characterized by the same injection parameters, same jet kinetic luminosity, and the same Mach
numbers. The evolution of these models shows that the plasma composition affects the propagation speed of the jet
head, the structure of the jet head, and the morphology, despite fixing the initial parameters. We conclude that
electron-positron jets are the slowest and show more pronounced turbulent structures in comparison to other
plasma compositions. The area and locations of the hot-spots also depend on the composition of the jet plasma. Our
results also show that boosting mechanisms are an important aspect of multi-dimensional simulations, which are
also influenced by the change in composition.
