Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-astrophysics-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2022/4/d/solution

Relativistic beaming concentrates the emission into a forward cone about the instantaneous velocity. The aberration of light maps a rest-frame ray at to , so the characteristic cone half-angle is . Thus its conventional full width is .
The isotropic-emission assumption has no beam nulls. For example, its received bolometric angular power is proportional to , where the Doppler factor is . In particular it is nonzero at , disproving a literal null there. A true dipole pattern for an accelerated electron is not isotropic in its rest frame and needs a specified polarization and viewing plane. The width just quoted is a characteristic beaming angle, not a null-to-null width under the stated premise.
For a circular orbit seen in its orbital plane, let the velocity direction sweep past the observer through . The emission interval is . The observed interval must also include light-travel compression:
Its ratio to the gyromotion period is . Since the boundary of a smooth beam is conventional, only the scale is invariant under reasonable pulse-width definitions. For helical motion the viewing geometry and pitch angle are additional inputs; the numerical estimate assumes transverse motion and a sightline intercepted by the cone.[ref]

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