Prograde and retrograde black holes: whose jet is more powerful?

By A. Tchekhovskoy, Jonathan C. McKinney Princeton, Stanford. 2012

149 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The outflow efficiency (η) from black hole (BH) accretion disc systems is known to depend upon both the BH spin (a) and the amount of large-scale magnetic flux threading the BH and disc. Semi-analytical flux-trapping models suggest retrograde BHs should trap much more large-scale magnetic flux near the BH leading to much higher η than for prograde BHs. We self-consistently determine the amount of large-scale magnetic flux trapped by rapidly spinning (a=−0.9 and 0.9) BHs using global 3D time-dependent non-radiative general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations of thick (h/r≈ 0.3–0.6) discs. We find that BH-trapped flux builds up until it is strong enough to disrupt the inner accretion disc. Contrary to prior flux-trapping models, which do not include the back-reaction of magnetic flux on the disc, our simulations show prograde BHs trap more magnetic flux, leading to about three times higher η than retrograde BHs for |a|= 0.9. Both spin orientations can produce highly efficient jets, η∼ 100 per cent, with increasing η for increasing disc thickness. The similarity of η for prograde and retrograde BHs makes it challenging to infer the sign of a based on jet energetics alone.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Geophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/58d55cd9574f31032bb40ca68c75ac4a12efc7a2

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Ramesh Narayan
2. A. Sa̧dowski
3. A. Tchekhovskoy
4. F. Yuan
5. J. McKinney
6. Bing Zhang
7. Pawan Kumar
8. Yucong Zhu

In Geophysics

1. Ramesh Narayan
2. A. Sa̧dowski
3. J. McKinney
4. F. Yuan
5. A. Tchekhovskoy
6. Yucong Zhu
7. Pawan Kumar
8. R. Penna

Citations in the corpus

• Energy, momentum and mass outflows and feedback from thick accretion discs around rotating black holes (2013, methodology): “Theoretical jet models indicate that the power extracted from a spinning accreting BH scales as (Blandford & Znajek 1977; Tchekhovskoy & McKinney 2012; Penna et al. 2013b) ηjet = Pjet Ṁc2 ∼ 0.05 4πc 2BH 2 H, (21) where 2BH is the magnetic flux threading the horizon (equation 12) and H is the…”
• The physics of gamma-ray bursts & relativistic jets (2014, background): “Tchekhovskoy et al. (2010); Tchekhovskoy and McKinney (2012) investigated this function numerically and obtained an analytical fit to the numerical model.”
• Hot Accretion Flows Around Black Holes (2014, background): “In this limit, the BZ jet power can exceed the total accretion energy budget of ṀBHc 2 (Tchekhovskoy et al. 2011, 2012; Tchekhovskoy & McKinney 2012).”
• Formation of precessing jets by tilted black hole discs in 3D general relativistic MHD simulations (2017, background): “…2003), the associated jets extract large amounts of rotational energy from the BH and the disc (Tchekhovskoy, McKinney & Narayan 2012; Tchekhovskoy 2015) and compress the disc vertically (Tchekhovskoy, Narayan & McKinney 2011; McKinney, Tchekhovskoy & Blandford 2012; Tchekhovskoy & McKinney 2012).”
• Semi-implicit scheme for treating radiation under M1 closure in general relativistic conservative fluid dynamics codes (2012, methodology): “…De Villiers-P., Hawley & Krolik 2003; Gammie, McKinney & Tóth 2003; Anninos, Fragile & Salmonson 2005; Del Zanna et al. 2007), and ADAF-like models have been simulated using these (see McKinney, Tchekhovskoy & Blandford 2012; Narayan et al. 2012; Tchekhovskoy & McKinney 2012 for recent work).”
• Three-dimensional general relativistic radiation magnetohydrodynamical simulation of super-Eddington accretion, using a new code HARMRAD with M1 closure (2013, background): “…Anninos et al. 2005; Del Zanna et al. 2007), and these simulations seek to find thermodynamically and dynamically selfconsistent solutions and to determine what free parameters (such as net magnetic flux) set the results (Narayan et al. 2012; McKinney et al. 2012; Tchekhovskoy & McKinney 2012).”
• Numerical simulations of super-critical black hole accretion flows in general relativity (2013, background): “…al. 2005; Del Zanna et al. 2007; Shafee et al. 2008; Penna et al. 2010; Tchekhovskoy et al. 2010a,b; Narayan et al. 2010; Noble et al. 2011; Tchekhovskoy et al. 2011; Tchekhovskoy & McKinney 2012a; Narayan et al. 2012b; Sa̧dowski et al. 2013b), and we compare our results to some of that work below.”
• Global simulations of axisymmetric radiative black hole accretion discs in general relativity with a mean-field magnetic dynamo (2014, background): “Optically thin flows have been extensively studied by means of general relativistic (GR) magnetohydrodynamical (MHD) simulations (e.g., De Villiers et al. 2003; Gammie et al. 2003; Anninos et al. 2005; Del Zanna et al. 2007; Narayan et al. 2012; McKinney et al. 2012; Tchekhovskoy & McKinney 2012).”
• Three-dimensional relativistic MHD simulations of active galactic nuclei jets: magnetic kink instability and Fanaroff–Riley dichotomy (2015, background): “…and have a parabola-like shape, as seen in the M87 galaxy (Nakamura & Asada 2013) and the numerical simulations of jet formation (McKinney 2006; Hawley & Krolik 2006; Tchekhovskoy, Narayan, & McKinney 2011; Tchekhovskoy, McKinney, & Narayan 2012; Tchekhovskoy & McKinney 2012; Tchekhovskoy 2015).”