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arXiv · 1710.09152

The essence of the Blandford-Znajek process

Abstract

From a spacetime perspective, the dynamics of magnetic field lines of force-free electromagnetic fields can be rewritten into a quite similar form for the dynamics of strings, i.e., dynamics of "field sheets". Using this formalism, we explicitly show that the field sheets of stationary and axisymmetric force-free electromagnetic fields have identical intrinsic properties to the world sheets of rigidly rotating Nambu-Goto strings. Thus, we conclude that the Blandford-Znajek process is kinematically identical to an energy-extraction mechanism by the Nambu-Goto string with an effective magnetic tension.

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Shunichiro Kinoshita, Takahisa Igata. 2017-10-25. The essence of the Blandford-Znajek process. https://doi.org/10.1093/ptep/pty024

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