Boosting jet power in black hole spacetimes
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.
Acknowledgments.
The authors thank J. Arons, P. Chang, B. MacNamara, K. Menou, E. Quataert, and C. Thompson, as well as our long time collaborators Matthew Anderson, Miguel Megevand, and Oscar Reula for useful discussions and comments. We acknowledge support from National Science Foundation Grants PHY-0803629 (to Louisiana State University), PHY-0969811 (to Brigham Young University), PHY-0969827 (to Long Island University), as well as the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council through a Discovery Grant. Research at Perimeter Institute is supported through Industry Canada and by the Province of Ontario through the Ministry of Research and Innovation. Computations were performed at Louisiana Optical Network Initiative, Teragrid, and Scinet.
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Cover image: Pictured is a wing imaginal disc, a larval structure that gives rise to the wing of the adult fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. Here, cells expressing a GFP-tagged Hedgehog protein, known to regulate development in a variety of tissue types, are shown in green; cells harboring a mutation in dispatched (disp), a gene required for the export of Hedgehog, are marked by an absence of blue staining. Colocalization staining (red) indicates that Hedgehog accumulates at the outer surface of disp mutant cells. Ainhoa Callejo et al. report that, while Hedgehog is released at both the apical and basolateral membranes of the disc epithelium, only protein released at the basolateral side forms the Hedgehog gradient. See the Feature Article by Callejo et al. on pages 12591–12598. Image courtesy of Isabel Guerrero.
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Submission history
Published online: July 18, 2011
Published in issue: August 2, 2011
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Acknowledgments
The authors thank J. Arons, P. Chang, B. MacNamara, K. Menou, E. Quataert, and C. Thompson, as well as our long time collaborators Matthew Anderson, Miguel Megevand, and Oscar Reula for useful discussions and comments. We acknowledge support from National Science Foundation Grants PHY-0803629 (to Louisiana State University), PHY-0969811 (to Brigham Young University), PHY-0969827 (to Long Island University), as well as the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council through a Discovery Grant. Research at Perimeter Institute is supported through Industry Canada and by the Province of Ontario through the Ministry of Research and Innovation. Computations were performed at Louisiana Optical Network Initiative, Teragrid, and Scinet.
Notes
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.
Authors
Competing Interests
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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