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 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.
- Received 5 October 2018
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.122.035101
© 2019 American Physical Society
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
Viewpoint
Feeding a Black Hole Jet
Published 23 January 2019
Simulations of the environment around a spinning black hole give new insight into the formation of luminous jets seen from Earth.
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