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Edited by Roger D. Blandford, Stanford University, Menlo Park, CA, and approved June 21, 2011 (received for review January 7, 2011)
Abstract
The extraction of rotational energy from a spinning black hole via the Blandford–Znajek mechanism has long been understood as an important component in models to explain energetic jets from compact astrophysical sources. Here we show more generally that the kinetic energy of the black hole, both rotational and translational, can be tapped, thereby producing even more luminous jets powered by the interaction of the black hole with its surrounding plasma. We study the resulting Poynting jet that arises from single boosted black holes and binary black hole systems. In the latter case, we find that increasing the orbital angular momenta of the system and/or the spins of the individual black holes results in an enhanced Poynting flux.
Footnotes
- ↵1To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: llehner{at}perimeterinstitute.ca.
Author contributions: L.L. designed research; D.N., L.L., C.P., and T.G. performed research; L.L., C.P., E.W.H., S.L.L., P.M.M., and T.G. contributed new analytic tools; D.N., C.P., and E.W.H. code development; D.N., L.L., C.P., S.L.L., and P.M.M. analyzed data; and D.N., L.L., C.P., E.W.H., and S.L.L. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
*The magnitude of the BZ-associated emission diminishes for nonaligned cases but it is nevertheless significant: The orthogonal case is only half as powerful as the aligned case.
Boosting jet power in black hole spacetimes
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