Black Hole Magnetospheres

Abstract

We investigate the structure of the steady-state force-free magnetosphere around a Kerr black hole in various astrophysical settings. The solution Psi(r,theta) depends on the distributions of the magnetic field line angular velocity omega(Psi) and the poloidal electric current I(Psi). These are obtained self-consistently as eigenfunctions that allow the solution to smoothly cross the two singular surfaces of the problem, the Inner Light Surface (ILS) inside the ergosphere, and the Outer Light Surface (OLS), which is the generalization of the pulsar light cylinder. Magnetic field configurations that cross both singular surfaces (e.g. monopole, paraboloidal) are uniquely determined. Configurations that cross only one light surface e.g. the artificial case of a rotating black hole embedded in a vertical magnetic field) are degenerate. We show that, similarly to pulsars, black hole magnetospheres naturally develop an electric current sheet that potentially plays a very important role in the dissipation of black hole rotational energy and in the emission of high-energy radiation.

10 pages, 4 figures, recommended for publication in the Astrophysical Journal

References in corpus (4)

• Radio-Loudness of Active Galactic Nuclei: Observational Facts and Theoretical Implications
• "Meissner effect" and Blandford-Znajek mechanism in conductive black hole magnetospheres
• Accurate Simulations of Binary Black-Hole Mergers in Force-Free Electrodynamics
• Electromagnetic extraction of energy from merging black holes

Cited by in corpus (7)

• The Cosmic Battery in Astrophysical Accretion Disks
• Energy extraction from boosted black holes: Penrose process, jets, and the membrane at infinity
• Fourth-order split monopole perturbation solutions to the Blandford-Znajek mechanism
• Magnetosphere of a Kerr black hole immersed in magnetized plasma and its perturbative mode structure
• Analytic properties of force-free jets in the Kerr spacetime -- III: uniform field solution
• Effects of Inner Alfvén Surface Location on Black Hole Energy Extraction in the Limit of a Force-Free Magnetosphere
• The immediate environment of an astrophysical black hole