Magnetic acceleration of relativistic AGN jets

By Serguei Komissarov, M. Barkov, Nektarios Vlahakis, A. Königl. 2007

223 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This is a brief review of the recent developments in the theory of magnetic acceleration of relativistic jets. We attempt to explain the key results of this complex theory using basic physical arguments and simple calculations. The main focus is on the standard model, which describes steady-state axisymmetric ideal MHD flows. We argue that this model is over-restrictive and discuss various alternatives.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/fc672f4ac6553709bc816de4353dff884eee9020

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Citations in the corpus

Simulations of magnetized discs around black holes: Effects of black hole spin, disc thickness and magnetic field geometry (2010, background): “The wind-jet power depends upon factors such as the BH spin (McKinney 2005; Hawley & Krolik 2006; Komissarov et al. 2007), disc thickness (Meier 2001; Tchekhovskoy, McKinney & Narayan 2008, 2009a; Tchekhovskoy, Narayan & McKinney 2009b, 2010), and the strength and large-scale behaviour of the…”
Ultraluminous X-ray sources in the Chandra and XMM-Newton era (2011, background): “…may come from comparisons of the radio loudness and lobe energy in low/hard state microquasars, probably dominated by magnetically accelerated jets (Komissarov et al. 2007), and in ULXs, possibly dominated by radiation-pressure accelerated jets/outflows (Takeuchi et al. 2010), with more…”
Kinematics of the jet in M 87 on scales of 100–1000 Schwarzschild radii (2016, methodology): “Considering the choice of total energy µ ∼ 18 used for these simulations, our results for Model 1 and Model 2 are qualitatively similar to the results of Komissarov et al. (2007).”
Non-thermal particle acceleration in collisionless relativistic electron-proton reconnection (2016, background): “…is due to the nature of the hydromagnetic acceleration process, which is efficient as long as the jet is magnetically dominated but becomes extremely inefficient once the kinetic energy and Poynting fluxes become comparable (Begelman & Li 1994; Vlahakis & Königl 2003a,b; Komissarov et al. 2007).”
The Proto-Magnetar Model for Gamma-Ray Bursts (2010, background): “Analytic (e.g. Vlahakis & Königl 2001; Narayan et al. 2007) and numerical (Komissarov et al. 2007, 2009; Tchekhovskoy et al. 2009, 2010) calculations show that if the jet is confined into a parabolic shape, additional acceleration is possible due to ‘equilibrium collimation’.”
Jet opening angles and gamma-ray brightness of AGN (2009, background): “Both the gas dynamical model (Daly & Marscher 1988) and magnetic acceleration models (Komissarov et al. 2007) also predict this relation.”
Relativistic MHD simulations of core-collapse GRB jets: 3D instabilities and magnetic dissipation (2015, background): “This allows us to speed up the simulation while keeping the physics the same (Komissarov et al. 2007).”
Three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic simulations of the Crab nebula (2013, background): “…into the bulk motion energy of particles is less of an issue for collimated jets than for uncollimated pulsar winds (e.g. Vlahakis & Königl 2004; Komissarov et al. 2007; Tchekhovskoy, Narayan & McKinney 2010; Lyubarsky 2009), it is still quite impossible to reach σ < 10−2, required by the PIC…”
General relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations of magnetically choked accretion flows around black holes (2012, background): “…et al. 2003; McKinney & Gammie 2004; McKinney 2005; De Villiers et al. 2005; Hawley & Krolik 2006; McKinney 2006b; Komissarov & McKinney 2007; Komissarov et al. 2007; McKinney & Narayan 2007a,b; Fragile et al. 2007; Beckwith et al. 2008a; McKinney & Blandford 2009; Noble et al. 2010;…”
The physics of gamma-ray bursts & relativistic jets (2014, background): “Recent advances in numerical solutions for relativistic MHD have led to significant progress in our understanding of the magnetic jet launching mechanism, propagation and acceleration (e.g. Komissarov, 2001, 2004; McKinney, 2006; Komissarov, 2007; Komissarov et al., 2007; McKinney and Narayan, 2007;”
Magnetic field strength and spectral distribution of six parsec-scale active galactic nuclei jets (2009, background): “Current theoretical models (Vlahakis & Königl 2004; Komissarov et al. 2007, hereafter K07) invoke rotation of the black hole magnetosphere and/or the inner accretion disc to create a stiff helical magnetic field that expels, accelerates and helps collimate the jet flow; an external medium is still…”
Galaxy formation theory (2010, background): “In this phase, the black hole is thought to drive powerful jets (Meier 1999, 2001; Villiers et al. 2005; Nemmen et al. 2007; Komissarov et al. 2007; Benson and Babul 2009) which can reach to large distances and have been seen to have asignificant impact on their surroundings (Birzan et al. 2004).”
The black hole accretion code (2016, background): “For example, in the MHD paradigm, jet acceleration is an intrinsically inefficient process that requires a few thousand gravitational radii to reach equipartition of the energy fluxes [22, 23] (purely hydrodynamical mechanisms can however be far more efficient [24]).”
Canonical high power blazars (2009, methodology): “We consider either a constant Γ or include an acceleration phase of the kind (see e.g. Komissarov et al. 2007; Vlahakis & Königl 2004): Γ = min " Γmax, „ R 3RS «1/2 # (4) When the acceleration phase is taken into account, the jet isassumed to be parabolic in shape, becoming conical whenΓ reaches…”
Simulations of ultrarelativistic magnetodynamic jets from gamma‐ray burst engines (2008, background): “Komissarov et al. (2007) apparently observed this ‘anomalous’ effect in one of their solutions.”