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arXiv · 1810.03613

First-Principles Plasma Simulations of Black-Hole Jet Launching

Kyle Parfrey·Alexander Philippov·Benoit Cerutti
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Abstract

Black holes drive powerful plasma jets to relativistic velocities. This plasma should be collisionless, and self-consistently supplied by pair creation near the horizon. We present general-relativistic collisionless plasma simulations of Kerr-black-hole magnetospheres which begin from vacuum, inject electron-positron pairs based on local unscreened electric fields, and reach steady states with electromagnetically powered Blandford-Znajek jets and persistent current sheets. Particles with negative energy-at-infinity are a general feature, and can contribute significantly to black-hole rotational-energy extraction in a variant of the Penrose process. The generated plasma distribution depends on the pair-creation environment, and we describe two distinct realizations of the force-free electrodynamic solution. This sensitivity suggests that plasma kinetics will be useful in interpreting future horizon-resolving submillimeter and infrared observations.

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Kyle Parfrey, Alexander Philippov, Benoit Cerutti. 2018-10-08. First-Principles Plasma Simulations of Black-Hole Jet Launching. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.122.035101

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