scholarly journals General-relativistic rotation: Self-gravitating fluid tori in motion around black holes

2018 ◽  
Vol 97 (10) ◽  
Author(s):  
Janusz Karkowski ◽  
Wojciech Kulczycki ◽  
Patryk Mach ◽  
Edward Malec ◽  
Andrzej Odrzywołek ◽  
...  
Author(s):  
David M. Wittman

General relativity explains much more than the spacetime around static spherical masses.We briefly assess general relativity in the larger context of physical theories, then explore various general relativistic effects that have no Newtonian analog. First, source massmotion gives rise to gravitomagnetic effects on test particles.These effects also depend on the velocity of the test particle, which has substantial implications for orbits around black holes to be further explored in Chapter 20. Second, any changes in the sourcemass ripple outward as gravitational waves, and we tell the century‐long story from the prediction of gravitational waves to their first direct detection in 2015. Third, the deflection of light by galaxies and clusters of galaxies allows us to map the amount and distribution of mass in the universe in astonishing detail. Finally, general relativity enables modeling the universe as a whole, and we explore the resulting Big Bang cosmology.


2020 ◽  
Vol 495 (2) ◽  
pp. 1549-1565 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonios Nathanail ◽  
Christian M Fromm ◽  
Oliver Porth ◽  
Hector Olivares ◽  
Ziri Younsi ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT One of the main dissipation processes acting on all scales in relativistic jets is thought to be governed by magnetic reconnection. Such dissipation processes have been studied in idealized environments, such as reconnection layers, which evolve in merging islands and lead to the production of ‘plasmoids’, ultimately resulting in efficient particle acceleration. In accretion flows on to black holes, reconnection layers can be developed and destroyed rapidly during the turbulent evolution of the flow. We present a series of two-dimensional general-relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations of tori accreting on to rotating black holes focusing our attention on the formation and evolution of current sheets. Initially, the tori are endowed with a poloidal magnetic field having a multiloop structure along the radial direction and with an alternating polarity. During reconnection processes, plasmoids and plasmoid chains are developed leading to a flaring activity and hence to a variable electromagnetic luminosity. We describe the methods developed to track automatically the plasmoids that are generated and ejected during the simulation, contrasting the behaviour of multiloop initial data with that encountered in typical simulations of accreting black holes having initial dipolar field composed of one loop only. Finally, we discuss the implications that our results have on the variability to be expected in accreting supermassive black holes.


2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (S342) ◽  
pp. 9-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ziri Younsi ◽  
Oliver Porth ◽  
Yosuke Mizuno ◽  
Christian M. Fromm ◽  
Hector Olivares

AbstractUpcoming VLBI observations will resolve nearby supermassive black holes, most notably Sagittarius A* and M87, on event horizon-scales. Recent observations of Sagittarius A* with the Event Horizon Telescope have revealed horizon-scale structure. Accordingly, the detection and measurement of the back hole “shadow” is expected to enable the existence of astrophysical black holes to be verified directly. Although the theoretical description of the shadow is straightforward, its observational appearance is largely determined by the properties of the surrounding accretion flow, which is highly turbulent. We introduce a new polarised general-relativistic radiative transfer code, BHOSS, which accurately solves the equations of polarised radiative transfer in arbitrary strong-gravity environments, providing physically-realistic images of astrophysical black holes on event horizon-scales, as well as also providing insight into the fundamental properties and nature of the surrounding accretion flow environment.


Science ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 339 (6115) ◽  
pp. 49-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan C. McKinney ◽  
Alexander Tchekhovskoy ◽  
Roger D. Blandford

Accreting black holes (BHs) produce intense radiation and powerful relativistic jets, which are affected by the BH’s spin magnitude and direction. Although thin disks might align with the BH spin axis via the Bardeen-Petterson effect, this does not apply to jet systems with thick disks. We used fully three-dimensional general relativistic magnetohydrodynamical simulations to study accreting BHs with various spin vectors and disk thicknesses and with magnetic flux reaching saturation. Our simulations reveal a “magneto-spin alignment” mechanism that causes magnetized disks and jets to align with the BH spin near BHs and to reorient with the outer disk farther away. This mechanism has implications for the evolution of BH mass and spin, BH feedback on host galaxies, and resolved BH images for the accreting BHs in SgrA* and M87.


Author(s):  
Abhrajit Bhattacharjee ◽  
Sandip Kumar Chakrabarti ◽  
Dipak Debnath

Abstract Spectral and timing properties of accretion flows on a black hole depend on their density and temperature distributions, which, in turn come from the underlying dynamics. Thus, an accurate description of the flow which includes hydrodynamics and radiative transfer is a must to interpret the observational results. In the case of non-rotating black holes, Pseudo- Newtonian description of surrounding space-time enables one to make a significant progress in predicting spectral and timing properties. This formalism is lacking for the spinning black holes. In this paper, we show that there exists an exact form of ‘natural’ potential derivable from the general relativistic (GR) radial momentum equation written in the local corotating frame. Use of this potential in an otherwise Newtonian set of equations, allows us to describe transonic flows very accurately as is evidenced by comparing with solutions obtained from the full GR framework. We study the properties of the sonic points and the centrifugal pressure supported shocks in the parameter space spanned by the specific energy and the angular momentum, and compare with the results of GR hydrodynamics. We show that this potential can safely be used for the entire range of Kerr parameter −1 < a < 1 for modeling of observational results around spinning black holes. We assume the flow to be inviscid. Thus, it is non-dissipative with constant energy and angular momentum. These assumptions are valid very close to the black hole horizon as the infall time scale is much shorter as compared to the viscous time scale.


2001 ◽  
Vol 205 ◽  
pp. 244-251
Author(s):  
M. Coleman Miller

X-ray timing observations of neutron stars and black holes are among the few available probes of ultrastrong magnetic fields, strong gravity, high densities, and the propagation of thermonuclear burning. Here we review the evidence for these effects revealed with data from the Rossi Explorer in the last five years. We also discuss the exciting prospects for making the first quantitative tests of strong-gravity general relativistic predictions with a large-area X-ray timing mission.


2020 ◽  
Vol 496 (2) ◽  
pp. 1224-1231
Author(s):  
Chris Nagele ◽  
Hideyuki Umeda ◽  
Koh Takahashi ◽  
Takashi Yoshida ◽  
Kohsuke Sumiyoshi

ABSTRACT We investigate the possibility of a supernova in supermassive (5 × 104 M⊙) population III stars induced by a general relativistic instability occurring in the helium burning phase. This explosion could occur via rapid helium burning during an early contraction of the isentropic core. Such an explosion would be visible to future telescopes and could disrupt the proposed direct collapse formation channel for early Universe supermassive black holes. We simulate first the stellar evolution from hydrogen burning using a 1D stellar evolution code with a post-Newtonian approximation; at the point of dynamical collapse, we switch to a 1D (general relativistic) hydrodynamic code with the Misner-Sharpe metric. In opposition to a previous study, we do not find an explosion in the non-rotating case, although our model is close to exploding for a similar mass to the explosion in the previous study. When we include slow rotation, we find one exploding model, and we conclude that there likely exist additional exploding models, though they may be rare.


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