Hotspots, Jets and Environments

Abstract

I discuss the nature of ‘hotspots’ and ‘jet knots’ in the kpc-scale structures of powerful radio galaxies and their relationship to jet-environment interactions. I describe evidence for interaction between the jets of FRI sources and their local environments, and discuss its relationship to particle acceleration, but the main focus of the paper is the hotspots of FRIIs and on new observational evidence on the nature of the particle acceleration associated with them.