Can the BZ mechanism power steady jets?

Abstract

We consider the Blandford-Znajek (BZ) mechanism for extracting black hole spin energy to drive astrophysical jets. Analyses of the BZ mechanism generally take no account of any electric charge on the black hole. But, as noted by Wald and others, if the medium surrounding the black hole is an ionized plasma with mobile charges, then a spinning hole quickly acquires an electric charge. The effect of this charge is to nullify the electric field structures which drive the BZ mechanism. Since jets are now observed in a wide variety of classes of accreting objects, most of which do not contain a central black hole, it seems likely that the jet driving mechanism in all astrophysical objects uses energy directly from the accretion disc, rather than black hole spin.

4 pages, accepted for publication in ApJL, proof version

References in corpus (3)

• The Co-Evolution of Galaxies and Supermassive Black Holes: Insights from Surveys of the Contemporary Universe
• Magnetohydrodynamic Simulations of Active Galactic Nucleus Disks and Jets
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• Magnetic Reconnection and Energy Extraction from a Spinning Black Hole with Broken Lorentz Symmetry
• Implications from the velocity profile of the M87 jet: a possibility of a slowly rotating black hole magnetosphere
• Electromagnetic Accelerating Universe
• Zooming in on the horizon when in its Meissner state
• Electrically-charged black holes and the Blandford-Znajek mechanism
• On the origin of core radio emissions from black hole sources in the realm of relativistic shocked accretion flow