Centrifugal acceleration of protons by a supermassive black hole

Abstract

The centrifugal acceleration is due to the rotating poloidal magnetic field in the magnetosphere creates the electric field which is orthogonal to the magnetic field. Charged particles with finite cyclotron radii can move along the electric field and receive energy. Centrifugal acceleration pushes particles to the periphery, where their azimuthal velocity reaches the light speed. We have calculated particle trajectories by numerical and analytical methods. The maximum obtained energies depend on the parameter of the particle magnetization $\kappa$, which is the ratio of rotation frequency of magnetic field lines in the magnetosphere ${\Omega }_F$ to non-relativistic cyclotron frequency of particles ${\omega }_c$, $\kappa ={\Omega }_F/{\omega }_c<<1$, and from the parameter $\alpha$ which is the ratio of toroidal magnetic field $B_T$ to the poloidal one $B_P$, $\alpha =B_T/B_P$. It is shown that for small toroidal fields, $\alpha <{\kappa }^{1/4}$, the maximum Lorentz factor ${\gamma }_m$ is only the square root of magnetization, ${\gamma }_m={\kappa }^{-1/2}$, while for large toroidal fields, $\alpha >{\kappa }^{1/4}$, the energy increases significantly, ${\gamma }_m={\kappa }^{-2/3}$. However, the maximum possible acceleration, ${\gamma }_m={\kappa }^{-1}$, is not achieved in the magnetosphere. For a number of active galactic nuclei, such as M87, maximum values of Lorentz factor for accelerated protons are found. Also for special case of Sgr. A* estimations of the maximum proton energy and its energy flux are obtained. They are in agreement with experimental data obtained by HESS Cherenkov telescope.

9 pages, 7 figures, 1 table

References in corpus (4)

• A Reverberation-Based Mass for the Central Black Hole in NGC 4151
• The Event Horizon of M87
• Variable VHE gamma-ray emission from non-blazar AGNs
• Near-infrared observations of star formation and gas flows in the NUGA galaxy NGC 1365

Cited by in corpus (5)

• The Hunt for Pevatrons: The Case of Supernova Remnants
• Acceleration of high energy protons in AGN relativistic jets
• Extinct radio pulsars as a source of subrelativistic positrons
• On the high-energy protons regular acceleration in the Fermi Bubbles
• Surfatron acceleration of the high energy protons in the relativistic jets