  We study the hotspots of powerful radiogalaxies, where electrons accelerated
at the jet termination shock emit synchrotron radiation. The turnover of the
synchrotron spectrum is typically observed between infrared and optical
frequencies, indicating that the maximum energy of non-thermal electrons
accelerated at the shock is ~TeV for a canonical magnetic field of ~100 micro
Gauss. We show that this maximum energy cannot be constrained by synchrotron
losses as usually assumed, unless the jet density is unreasonably large and
most of the jet upstream energy goes to non-thermal particles. We test this
result by considering a sample of hotspots observed at radio, infrared and
optical wavelengths.
