General relativistic magnetohydrodynamical simulations of the jet in M 87

By M. Mościbrodzka, Heino Falcke, H. Shiokawa. 2015

219 citations recorded by the source corpus.

(abridged) The connection between black hole, accretion disk, and radio jet can be best constrained by fitting models to observations of nearby low luminosity galactic nuclei, in particular the well studied sources Sgr~A* and M87. There has been considerable progress in modeling the central engine of active galactic nuclei by an accreting supermassive black hole coupled to a relativistic plasma jet. However, can a single model be applied to a range of black hole masses and accretion rates? Here we want to compare the latest three-dimensional numerical model, originally developed for Sgr A* in the center of the Milky Way, to radio observations of the much more powerful and more massive black hole in M87. We postprocess three-dimensional GRMHD models of a jet-producing radiatively inefficient accretion flow around a spinning black hole using relativistic radiative transfer and ray-tracing to produce model spectra and images. As a key new ingredient to these models, we allow the proton-electron coupling in these simulations depend on the magnetic properties of the plasma. We find that the radio emission in M87 is well described by a combination of a two-temperature accretion flow and a hot single-temperature jet. The model fits the basic observed characteristics of the M87 radio core. The best fit model has a mass-accretion rate of Mdot approx 9x10^{-3} MSUN/YR and a total jet power of P_j \sim 10^{43} erg/s. Emission at 1.3mm is produced by the counter jet close to the event horizon. Its characteristic crescent shape surrounding the black hole shadow could be resolved by future millimeter-wave VLBI experiments. The model was successfully derived from one for the supermassive black hole in center of the Milky Way by appropriately scaling mass and accretion rate. This suggests the possibility that this model could also apply to a larger range of low-luminosity black holes.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/10ceba573396d5680339a1cc0ea3b3c81c1785af

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

Citations in the corpus

The black hole accretion code (2016, methodology): “A somewhat more sophisticated approach is to employ a thresholding of the fluid plasma beta where, when the local plasma beta exceeds some threshold the electrons and protons are coupled as previously mentioned (disk region), but when not exceeded (typically in the funnel region) the electron temper”
Black Hole Flares: Ejection of Accreted Magnetic Flux through 3D Plasmoid-mediated Reconnection (2021, unknown): “Commonly used parametrized relations connecting the temperatures of ions and electrons based on local plasma-β or σ values in the accretion flow (e.g., Moscibrodzka et al. 2016; Davelaar et al. 2019; Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration et al. 2019b; Dexter et al. 2020; Yoon et al. 2020;…”
First M87 Event Horizon Telescope Results. V. Physical Origin of the Asymmetric Ring (2019, unknown): “It is adapted from Mościbrodzka et al. (2016) and motivated by models for electron heating in a turbulent, collisionless plasma that preferentially heats the ions for 1p b (e.g., Howes 2010; Kawazura et al. 2018).”
First Sagittarius A* Event Horizon Telescope Results. IV. Variability, Morphology, and Black Hole Mass (2022, methodology): “…the eht-imaging software to first apply artificial scattering to the source structure per the scattering model from Johnson 161 Rhigh is a parameter that sets the ratio of ion to electron temperatures in the simulated images; see M87* Paper V, Paper V, and Mościbrodzka et al. (2016) for details.”
First Sagittarius A* Event Horizon Telescope Results. V. Testing Astrophysical Models of the Galactic Center Black Hole (2022, methodology): “We adopt the same model as M87* Paper V and Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration et al. 2021a, hereafter M87* Paper VIII, where ( )= = + + + R T T R b b R b1 1 1 13i e high 2 2 low 2 (Mościbrodzka et al. 2016) and b≡ β/βcrit.”
The Event Horizon General Relativistic Magnetohydrodynamic Code Comparison Project (2019, methodology): “…one can see that between the evacuated funnel demarcated by the funnel wall (red) and the bound disk material (blue), there is a strip of outflowing material often also referred to as the jet sheath (Dexter et al. 2012; Mościbrodzka & Falcke 2013; Mościbrodzka et al. 2016a; Davelaar et al. 2018).”