Self-consistent multidimensional Penrose process driven by magnetic reconnection

Abstract

Astronomical observations and numerical simulations are providing increasing evidence that resistive effects in plasmas around black holes play an important role in determining the phenomenology observed from these objects. In this spirit, we present a general approach to the study of a Penrose process driven by plasmoids that are produced at reconnection sites along current sheets. Our formalism is meant to determine the physical conditions that make a plasmoid-driven Penrose process energetically viable and can be applied to scenarios that are matter- or magnetic-field-dominated, that is, in magnetohydrodynamical or force-free descriptions. By exploring reconnection from an axisymmetric but curved surface, our approach can be considered genuinely multidimensional and allows us to explore conditions that are beyond the ones explored so far and that have been restricted to the equatorial plane. Furthermore, it provides a direct contact with numerical simulations of accretion onto black holes, which exhibit an intense reconnection activity outside the equatorial plane. Finally, to describe the kinematics of the plasma self-consistently, we use the well-known configuration of an equilibrium torus with a purely toroidal magnetic field. For such a torus, we discuss the existence of an ``ergobelt'', \ie a nontrivial surface penetrating the ergosphere and acting as a natural a site for the occurrence of reconnection, and from where we estimate the energetics of a plasmoid-driven Penrose process.

v2: 7 pages + 3 appendix, 4 figures, matches published version in ApJL

References in corpus (24)

• First M87 Event Horizon Telescope Results. V. Physical Origin of the Asymmetric Ring
• First Sagittarius A* Event Horizon Telescope Results. V. Testing Astrophysical Models of the Galactic Center Black Hole
• Formation of Hard Power-laws in the Energetic Particle Spectra Resulting from Relativistic Magnetic Reconnection
• Magnetized Neutron Star Mergers and Gravitational Wave Signals
• General relativistic simulations of magnetized binary neutron star mergers
• Why does steady-state magnetic reconnection have a maximum local rate of order 0.1?
• A Review of the 0.1 Reconnection Rate Problem
• Magnetized Tori around Kerr Black Holes: Analytic Solutions with a Toroidal Magnetic Field
• Collisional Penrose process near the horizon of extreme Kerr black holes
• General Relativistic Force-Free Electrodynamics: A New Code and Applications to Black Hole Magnetospheres
• On the Distribution of Plasmoids In High-Lundquist-Number Magnetic Reconnection
• Revised upper limit to energy extraction from a Kerr black hole
• Magnetic Hair and Reconnection in Black Hole Magnetospheres
• Black Hole Magnetospheres
• Scaling of magnetic reconnection in relativistic collisionless plasmas
• Magnetic Reconnection as a Mechanism for Energy Extraction from Rotating Black Holes
• Ultra-high-energy debris from the collisional Penrose process
• Dynamics of magnetized relativistic tori oscillating around black holes
• Energy Extraction from a Rotating Black Hole by Magnetic Reconnection in Ergosphere
• Generalized Magnetofluid Connections in Relativistic Magnetohydrodynamics
• Magnetic reconnection plasmoid model for Sagittarius A* flares
• Magnetised Polish doughnuts revisited
• Relativistic Magnetic Reconnection in Kerr Spacetime
• Signatures of Black Hole Spin and Plasma Acceleration in Jet Polarimetry

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Electromagnetic Energy Extraction from Kerr Black Holes: Ab-Initio Calculations
• Turbulence and Magnetic Reconnection in Relativistic Multispecies Plasmas
• Radiative Cooling Effects on Plasmoid Formation in Black Hole Accretion Flows with Multiple Magnetic Loops
• Universality of the Blandford-Znajek emission in stationary and axisymmetric spacetimes
• FPIC: a new Particle-In-Cell code for stationary and axisymmetric black-hole spacetimes