Detection of an X-Ray Jet in 3C 371 with Chandra

Abstract

We report the detection at X-rays of the radio/optical jet of 3C 371 from a short (10 ks) Chandra exposure in 2000 March. We also present a new MERLIN observation at 1.4 GHz together with a reanalysis of the archival Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 F555W image. Despite the limited signal-to-noise ratio of the Chandra data, the X-ray morphology is clearly different from that of the radio/optical emission, with the brightest X-ray knot at 1.7" from the nucleus and little X-ray emission from the brightest radio/optical knot at 3.1". We construct the spectral energy distributions for the two emission regions at 1.7" and 3.1". Both show that the X-ray flux is below the extrapolation from the radio-to-optical continuum, suggesting a moderately beamed synchrotron from an electron population with a decreasing high-energy cutoff as a plausible emission mechanism.