Generation of a Fireball in AGN Hot Plasmas

Abstract

Motivated by relativistic jets observed in active galactic nuclei (AGN), we simulate outflows of electron-positron pairs strongly coupled with photons from normal electron-proton plasmas. Using multi-fluid approximation and a Monte Carlo method of radiative transfer, we obtain spherically symmetric, steady solutions of radiation and pair outflows for the luminosity $L\le 10^{47}$ erg ${\mathrm{s}}^{-1}$. For microphysics, Coulomb scattering, Compton scattering, bremsstrahlung, electron-positron pair annihilation and creation are taken into account. Although a significant amount of pairs outflow by powerful radiative force with a mildly relativistic velocity, the temperature is not high enough to avoid pair annihilation before the fireball becomes optically thin to scattering. Several caveats in the simulations are also discussed.

20 pages, 7figures. accepted for publication in ApJ

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Prevalence of Extra Power-Law Spectral Components in Short Gamma-Ray Bursts
• Could a plasma in quasi-thermal equilibrium be associated to the "orphan" TeV flares ?
• A Relativistic Electron-Positron Outflow from a Tepid Fireball
• Energy and Momentum Transfer via Coulomb Frictions in Relativistic Two Fluids
• Dynamical generation of macroscale magnetic fields and fast flows in a four-component astrophysical plasma