The Black Hole Meissner Effect and Blandford-Znajek Jets

Abstract

Spinning black holes tend to expel magnetic fields. In this way they are similar to superconductors. It has been a persistent concern that this black hole "Meissner effect" could quench jet power at high spins. This would make it impossible for the rapidly rotating black holes in Cyg X-1 and GRS 1915+105 to drive Blandford-Znajek jets. We give a simple geometrical argument why fields which become entirely radial near the horizon are not expelled by the Meissner effect and may continue to power jets up to the extremal limit. A simple and natural example is a split-monopole field. We stress that ordinary Blandford-Znajek jets are impossible if the Meissner effect operates and expels the field. Finally, we note that in our general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations of black hole jets, there is no evidence that jets are quenched by the Meissner effect. The simulated jets develop a large split monopole component spontaneously which supports our proposal for how the Meissner effect is evaded and jets from rapidly rotating black holes are powered in nature.

9 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Stability of Relativistic Jets from Rotating, Accreting Black Holes via Fully Three-Dimensional Magnetohydrodynamic Simulations
• "Meissner effect" and Blandford-Znajek mechanism in conductive black hole magnetospheres
• General Relativistic Force-Free Electrodynamics: A New Code and Applications to Black Hole Magnetospheres
• The role of the ergosphere in the Blandford-Znajek process

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• Phase-Transition Theory of Kerr Black Holes in Electromagnetic Field
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• Maxwell Fields in Boosted Kerr Black Holes
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• Signatures of Extra Dimensions in Black Hole Jets
• Fundamental fields around compact objects: Massive spin-2 fields, Superradiant instabilities and Stars with dark matter cores