The Effects of Gas Angular Momentum on the Formation of Magnetically Arrested Disks and the Launching of Powerful Jets

Abstract

In this letter, we investigate Bondi-like accretion flows with zero or low specific angular momentum by performing 3D general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations. In order to check if relativistic jets can be launched magnetically from such flows, we insert a large-scale poloidal magnetic field into the accretion flow and consider a rapidly spinning black hole. We demonstrate that under such conditions the accretion flow needs to initially have specific angular momentum above a certain threshold to eventually reach and robustly sustain the magnetically arrested disk state. If the flow can reach such a state, it can launch very powerful jets at $\gtrsim 100\%$ energy efficiency. Interestingly, we also find that even when the accretion flow has initial specific angular momentum below the threshold, it can still launch episodic jets with an average energy efficiency of $\sim 10\%$. However, the accretion flow has nontypical behaviors such as having different rotation directions at different inclinations and exhibiting persistent outflows along the midplane even in the inner disk region. Our results give plausible explanations as to why jets can be produced from various astrophysical systems that likely lack large gas specific angular momenta, such as Sgr A*, wind-fed X-ray binaries, tidal disruption events, and long-duration gamma-ray bursts.

18 pages, 12 figures, 2 tables, published in ApJL, comments welcome!

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Cited by in corpus (6)

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• General relativistic magnetized Bondi-Hoyle-Lyttleton accretion with a spin-field misalignment: Jet nutation, polarity reversals, and Magnus drag
• Deep learning inference with the Event Horizon Telescope III. Zingularity results from the 2017 observations and predictions for future array expansions
• Black hole outflows initiated by a large-scale magnetic field
• The Discovery of an Active Wind from the Milky Way's Black Hole