Observations of the Blandford–Znajek process and the magnetohydrodynamic Penrose process in computer simulations of black hole magnetospheres

By Serguei Komissarov. 2005

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In this paper we report the results of axisymmetric relativistic MHD simulations for the problem of Kerr black hole immersed into a rarefied plasma with ”uniform” magnetic field. The long term solution shows properties which are significantly different from those of the initial transient phase studied recently by Koide(2003). The topology of magnetic field lines within the ergosphere is similar to that of the splitmonopole model with a strong current sheet in the equatorial plane. Closer inspection reveals a system of isolated magnetic islands inside the sheet and ongoing magnetic reconnection. No regions of negative hydrodynamic ”energy at infinity” are seen inside the ergosphere and the so-called MHD Penrose process does not operate. Yet, the rotational energy of the black hole continues to be extracted via purely electromagnetic mechanism of Blandford and Znajek(1977). However, this is not followed by development of strong relativistic outflows from the black hole. Combined with results of other recent simulations this signals a potential problem for the standard MHD model of relativistic astrophysical jets should they still be observed at distances as small as few tens of gravitational radii from the central black hole.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b3ea686799ab86cddd1e2e820dbc2c1c07be8080

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Citations in the corpus

MOJAVE: Monitoring of Jets in Active galactic nuclei with VLBA Experiments (2012, background): “The jets take away a substantial fraction of the energy and angular momentum stored in the accretion flow (Hujeirat et al. 2003) and spinning central black hole (Koide et al. 2002; Komissarov 2005).”
Short-hard gamma-ray bursts (2007, result): “Recent GRMHD simulations find that the energy of Poynting flux jets is directly related the spin of the BH and is in general agreement with the predictions of Blandford & Znajek 1977 36 (McKinney & Gammie, 2004; McKinney, 2005; Hawley & Krolik, 2006, see also Komissarov 2004, 2005).”
General relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations of the jet formation and large-scale propagation from black hole accretion systems (2006, background): “In GRMHD numerical models of Poynting jets, the black hole’s polar region is always completely evacuated (McKinney & Gammie 2004; Komissarov 2004, 2005; De Villiers, Hawley, & Krolik 2003; De Villiers et al. 2005a).”
Simulations of ultrarelativistic magnetodynamic jets from gamma‐ray burst engines (2008, methodology): “…insight into the accretionjet phenomenon has been achieved within the framework of general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics (GRMHD) via time-dependent numerical simulations (De Villiers, Hawley & Krolik 2003; McKinney & Gammie 2004; Komissarov 2005; McKinney 2005b; Aloy & Obergaulinger 2007).”
Primitive Variable Solvers for Conservative General Relativistic Magnetohydrodynamics (2005, background): “Some of these authors (Komissarov 2005; Koide et al. 1999; Gammie et al. 2003; Duez et al. 2005; Antón et al. 2006) have adopted a conservative scheme.”
ECHO: a Eulerian conservative high-order scheme for general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics and magnetodynamics (2007, background): “…mechanism for the extraction of rotational energy from a Kerr black hole (Komissarov 2001; Koide 2003; Komissarov 2004; McKinney & Gammie 2004; Komissarov 2005; McKinney 2005), the spin evolution of a black hole under the effect of different physical processes (Gammie et al. 2004), the…”
Total and Jet Blandford-Znajek Power in the Presence of an Accretion Disk (2005, result): “…is created in the ergosphere, and the electromagnetic energy at infinity completely dominates the hydrodynamic energy at infinity associated with the MHD Penrose process, in basic agreement with the results of Komissarov (2005) and counter to the results of Koide et al. (2002) and Punsly (2005).”
Magnetically Driven Jets in the Kerr Metric (2005, background): “One type of simulation has been devoted to examining the idealized problem of a rotating black hole embedded in thin plasma containing a specified external magnetic field (Koide 2003; Semenov et al. 2004; Komissarov 2005).”