Numerical simulation of magnetic reconnection around a black hole

Abstract

We performed numerical simulations of general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics with uniform resistivity to investigatethe occurrence of magnetic reconnection in a split-monopole magnetic field around a Schwarzschild black hole. We found that magnetic reconnection happens near the black hole at its equatorial plane. The magnetic reconnection has a point-like reconnection region and slow shock waves, as in the Petschek reconnection model. The magnetic reconnection rate decreases as the resistivity becomes smaller. When the global magnetic Reynolds number is $10^4$ or larger, the magnetic reconnection rate increases linearly with time from $2{\tau }_{\mathrm{S}}$ to $\sim 10{\tau }_{\mathrm{S}}$ (${\tau }_{\mathrm{S}}=r_{\mathrm{S}}/c,r_{\mathrm{S}}$ is the Schwarzschild radius and $c$ is the speed of light). The linear increase of the reconnection rate agrees with the magnetic reconnection in the Rutherford regime of the tearing mode instability.

arXiv comment22 pages, 9 Figures

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Cited by in corpus (4)

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• Generalized general-relativistic magnetohydrodynamic equations for plasmas of active galactic nuclei in the era of the Event Horizon Telescope