Black hole (BH) spin can play an important role in galaxy evolution by controlling the amount of energy and momentum ejected from near the BH into the surroundings. We focus on radiatively-inefficient and geometrically-thick magnetically-arrested disks (MADs) that can launch strong BH-powered jets. With an appropriately chosen adiabatic index, these systems can describe either the low-luminosity or highly super-Eddington BH accretion regimes. Using a suite of 3D general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) simulations, we find that for any initial spin, a MAD rapidly spins down the BH to the equilibrium spin of $0< a_{\rm eq} \lesssim 0.1$, very low compared to $a_{\rm eq} = 1$ for the standard thin luminous (Novikov-Thorne) disks. This implies that rapidly accreting (super-Eddington) BHs fed by MADs tend to lose most of their rotational energy to magnetized relativistic outflows. In a MAD, a BH only needs to accrete $20\%$ of its own mass to spin down from $a=1$ to $a=0.2$. We construct a semi-analytic model of BH spin evolution in MADs by taking into account the torques on the BH due to both the hydrodynamic disk and electromagnetic jet components, and find that the low value of $a_{\rm eq} $ is due to both the jets slowing down the BH rotation and the disk losing a large fraction of its angular momentum to outflows. Our results have crucial implications for how BH spins evolve in active galaxies and other systems such as collapsars, where BH spin-down timescale can be short enough to significantly affect the evolution of gamma-ray emitting BH-powered jets.
New long-term Very Long Baseline Array observations of the well-known jet in the M87 radio galaxy at 43 GHz show that the jet experiences a sideways shift with an approximately 8-10 yr quasi-periodicity. Such jet wobbling can be indicative of a relativistic Lense-Thirring precession resulting from a tilted accretion disc. The wobbling period together with up-to-date kinematic data on jet rotation opens up the possibility for estimating angular momentum of the central supermassive black hole. In the case of a test-particle precession, the specific angular momentum is $J/Mc=(2.7\pm1.5)\times10^{…
Large-amplitude Sgr A* near-infrared flares result from energy injection into electrons near the black hole event horizon. Astrometry data show continuous rotation of the emission region during bright flares, and corresponding rotation of the linear polarization angle. One broad class of physical flare models invokes magnetic reconnection. Here we show that such a scenario can arise in a general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulation of a magnetically arrested disc. Saturation of magnetic flux triggers eruption events, where magnetically dominated plasma is expelled from near the horizon …
We propose a novel interpretation that gamma-rays from nearby radio galaxies are hadronic emission from magnetically arrested disks (MADs) around central black holes (BHs). The magnetic energy in MADs is higher than the thermal energy of the accreting plasma, where the magnetic reconnection or turbulence may efficiently accelerate non-thermal protons. They emit gamma-rays via hadronic processes, which can account for the observed gamma-rays for M87 and NGC 315. Non-thermal electrons are also accelerated with protons and produce MeV gamma-rays, which is useful to test our model by proposed MeV …
We evolve two high-resolution general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) simulations of advection-dominated accretion flows around non-spinning black holes (BHs), each over a duration $\sim 3\times 10^5\,GM_{\rm BH}/c^3$. One model captures the evolution of a weakly magnetized (SANE) disk and the other a magnetically arrested disk (MAD). Magnetic flux eruptions in the MAD model push out gas from the disk and launch strong winds with outflow efficiencies at times reaching $10\%$ of the incoming accretion power. Despite the substantial power in these winds, average mass outflow rates remai…
We describe global, 3D, time-dependent, non-radiative, general-relativistic, magnetohydrodynamic simulations of accreting black holes (BHs). The simulations are designed to transport a large amount of magnetic flux to the center, more than the accreting gas can force into the BH. The excess magnetic flux remains outside the BH, impedes accretion, and leads to a magnetically arrested disc. We find powerful outflows. For a BH with spin parameter a = 0.5, the efficiency with which the accretion system generates outflowing energy in jets and winds is eta ~ 30%. For a = 0.99, we find eta ~ 140%, wh…
We investigate numerical convergence in simulations of magnetically arrested disks around spinning black holes. Using the general-relativistic magnetohydrodynamics code Athena++, we study the same system at four resolutions (up to an effective 512 by 256 by 512 cells) and with two different spatial reconstruction algorithms. The accretion rate and general large-scale structure of the flow agree across the simulations. This includes the amount of magnetic flux accumulated in the saturated state and the ensuing suppression of the magnetorotational instability from the strong field. The energy of…
Recent observations of SgrA* by the GRAVITY instrument have astrometrically tracked infrared flares (IR) at distances of $\sim 10$ gravitational radii ($r_g$). In this paper, we study a model for the flares based on 3D general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) simulations of magnetically arrested accretion disks (MADs) which exhibit violent episodes of flux escape from the black hole magnetosphere. These events are attractive for flare modeling for several reasons: i) the magnetically dominant regions can resist being disrupted via magneto-rotational turbulence and shear, ii) the orient…
Magnetically-arrested disks (MADs) appear when accretion flows are supplied with a sufficient amount of magnetic flux. In this work, we use results of magnetohydrodynamic simulations to set the configuration of the magnetic field and investigate the dynamics and radiative properties of the resulting accretion flow (i.e., without that of the jet) of MAD. The method developed here is applied to both the MAD and the standard and normal evolution (SANE) accretion flow with or without large scale magnetic fields. For the radiative processes, we include synchrotron, bremsstrahlung and Compton scatte…
Magnetically arrested accretion flows are thought to fuel some of the supermassive black holes and to power their relativistic jets. We calculate and study a time sequence of linear and circular polarimetric images of numerical, high resolution and long duration simulations of magnetically dominated flows to investigate observational signatures of strong magnetic fields near the event horizon of a non-rotating black hole. We find that the magnitude of resolved linear and circular polarizations is rather sensitive to the assumption of the coupling of electron and ions in the accretion flow. Mod…
We propose magnetically arrested disks (MADs) in quiescent black-hole (BH) binaries as the origin of the multiwavelength emission, and argue that this class of sources can dominate the cosmic-ray spectrum around the knee. X-ray luminosities of Galactic BH binaries in the quiescent state are far below the Eddington luminosity, and thus, radiatively inefficient accretion flows (RIAFs) are formed in the inner region. Strong thermal and turbulent pressures in RIAFs produce outflows, which can create large-scale poloidal magnetic fields. These fields are carried to the vicinity of the BH by the rap…
$\textit{BMAD}$-Circumbinary Magnetically Arrested Disks around Stellar or Black Hole Binaries: Hot Accretion Flows, Disk Properties, and Angular Momentum Transfer
We discuss the prospects for identifying nearest isolated black holes (IBHs) in our Galaxy. IBHs accreting gas from the interstellar medium (ISM) likely form magnetically arrested disks (MADs). We show that thermal electrons in the MADs emit optical signals through the thermal synchrotron process while non-thermal electrons accelerated via magnetic reconnections emit a flat-spectrum synchrotron radiation in the X-ray to MeV gamma-ray ranges. The Gaia catalog will include at most a thousand of IBHs within $\lesssim 1$ kpc that are distributed on and around the cooling sequence of white dwarfs (…
The Hubble Space Telescope composite quasar spectra presented in Telfer et al. show a significant deficit of emission in the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) for the radio loud component of the quasar population (RLQs), compared to the radio quiet component of the quasar population (RQQs). The composite quasar continuum emission between 1100 Å\, and $\sim$580 Å\, is generally considered to be associated with the innermost regions of the accretion flow onto the central black hole. The deficit between 1100 Å\, and 580 Å\, in RLQs has a straightforward interpretation as a missing or a suppressed innermo…
The origins of the GeV gamma-rays from nearby radio galaxies are unknown. Hadronic emission from magnetically arrested disks (MADs) around central black holes (BHs) is proposed as a possible scenario. Particles are accelerated in the MAD by magnetic reconnection and stochastic turbulence acceleration. We pick out the fifteen brightest radio galaxies in the GeV band from the Fermi 4LAC-DR2 catalog and apply the MAD model. We find that we can explain the data in the GeV bands by the MAD model if the accretion rate is lower than 0.1% of the Eddington rate. For a higher accretion rate, GeV gamma-r…
Blazars show variability on timescales ranging from minutes to years, the former being comparable to and in some cases even shorter than the light-crossing time of the central black hole. The observed gamma-ray lightcurves can be described by a power-law power density spectrum (PDS), with a similar index for both BL Lacs and flat-spectrum radio quasars. We show that this variability can be produced by turbulence in relativistic jets launched by magnetically arrested accretion flows (MADs). We perform radiative transport calculations on the turbulent, highly-magnetized jet launching region of a…
We present 3D general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) simulations of the accretion flow surrounding Sagittarius A* that are initialized using larger-scale MHD simulations of the $\sim$ 30 Wolf--Rayet (WR) stellar winds in the Galactic center. The properties of the resulting accretion flow on horizon scales are set not by ad hoc initial conditions but by the observationally constrained properties of the WR winds with limited free parameters. For this initial study we assume a non-spinning black hole. Our simulations naturally produce a $\sim 10^{-8} M_\odot$ yr$^{-1}$ accretion rate, c…
We present two-temperature, radiative general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations of Magnetically Arrested Discs (MAD) that launch powerful relativistic jets. The mass accretion rates of our simulations are scaled to match the luminosity of the accretion flow around the supermassive black hole in M87. We consider two sub-grid prescriptions for electron heating: one based on a Landau-damped turbulent cascade, and the other based on heating from trans-relativistic magnetic reconnection. The simulations produce jets with power on the order of the observed value for M87. Both simulations …
We investigate the dependence of the GRB jet structure and its evolution on the properties of the accreting torus in the central engine. Our models numerically evolve the accretion disk around a Kerr black hole using 3D general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations. We use two different analytical hydrodynamical models of the accretion disk, based on the Fishbone-Moncrief and Chakrabarti solutions, as our initial states for the structure of the collapsar disk and the remnant after a binary neutron star merger, respectively. We impose poloidal magnetic fields of two different geometries …
Institute for Astronomy, School of Physics, Zhejiang University（浙江大学物理学院天体物理研究所）；Center for Cosmology and Computational Astrophysics, School of Physics, Zhejiang University（浙江大学物理学院宇宙学与计算天体物理中心）；Department of Astronomy, School of Physics and Astronomy, Key Laboratory of Astroparticle Physics of Yunnan Province, Yunnan University（云南大学物理与天文学院天文学系云南省高能粒子物理重点实验室）；School of Physics and Electronic Science, Guizhou Normal University（贵州师范大学物理科学与电子科学学院）；Department of Astronomy, School of Physics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology（华中科技大学物理学院天文学系）
Aims. Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) with EUV deficit are suggested to be powered by a MAD surrounding the black hole, where the slope of EUV spectra ($α_{\rm EUV}$) is found to possess a well positive relationship with the jet efficiency. In this work, we investigate the properties of X-ray emission in AGNs with EUV deficit for the first time. Methods. We construct a sample of 15 objects with EUV deficit to analyse their X-ray emission. The X-ray luminosity in 13 objects are newly processed by ourself, while the other 2 sources are gathered from archival data. Results. It is found that the ave…
The classical, relativistic thin-disk theory of Novikov and Thorne (NT) predicts a maximum accretion efficiency of 40% for an optically thick, radiatively efficient accretion disk around a maximally spinning black hole (BH). However, when a strong magnetic field is introduced to numerical simulations of thin disks, large deviations in efficiency are observed, in part due to mass and energy carried by jets and winds launched by the disk or BH spin. The total efficiency of accretion can be significantly enhanced beyond that predicted by NT but it has remained unclear how the radiative component …
In accretion disks with large-scale ordered magnetic fields, the magnetorotational instability (MRI) is marginally suppressed, so other processes may drive angular momentum transport leading to accretion. Accretion could then be driven by large-scale magnetic fields via magnetic braking, but large-scale magnetic flux can build-up onto the black hole and within the disk leading to a magnetically-arrested disk (MAD). Such a MAD state is unstable to the magnetic Rayleigh-Taylor (RT) instability, which itself leads to vigorous turbulence and the emergence of low-density highly-magnetized bubbles. …
Sgr A* exhibits flares in the near-infrared and X-ray bands, with the luminosity in these bands increasing by factors of $10-100$ for $\approx 60$ minutes. One of the models proposed to explain these flares is synchrotron emission of non-thermal particles accelerated by magnetic reconnection events in the accretion flow. We use the results from PIC simulations of magnetic reconnection to post-process 3D two-temperature GRMHD simulations of a magnetically arrested disc (MAD). We identify current sheets, retrieve their properties, estimate their potential to accelerate non-thermal particles and …
The radiative efficiency of super-Eddington accreting black holes (BHs) is explored for magnetically-arrested disks (MADs), where magnetic flux builds-up to saturation near the BH. Our three-dimensional general relativistic radiation magnetohydrodynamic (GRRMHD) simulation of a spinning BH (spin $a/M=0.8$) accreting at $\sim 50$ times Eddington shows a total efficiency $\sim 50\%$ when time-averaged and total efficiency $\gtrsim 100\%$ in moments. Magnetic compression by the magnetic flux near the rotating BH leads to a thin disk, whose radiation escapes via advection by a magnetized wind and …
Three-dimensional Global Relativistic Radiation Magnetohydrodynamics of Magnetically Arrested Disk Accretion Flows in AGNs
National Tsing Hua University（国立清华大学）；Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica（中央研究院天文及天文物理研究所）；Center for Theory and Computation, National Tsing Hua University（国立清华大学理论中心）；Physics Division, National Center for Theoretical Sciences, National Taiwan University（台湾大学理论科学中心物理组）；Hakodate Campus, Hokkaido University of Education（北海道教育大学函馆校区）
Large-scale magnetic fields play a vital role in determining the angular momentum transport and generating jets/outflows in the accreting systems, yet their origin remains poorly understood. We focus on radiatively inefficient accretion flows (RIAFs) around the black holes (BHs), and conduct three-dimensional general-relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) simulations using the Athena++ code. We first re-confirm that the MRI dynamo in the RIAF alone does not spontaneously form a magnetically arrested disk (MAD), conducive for strong jet formation. We next investigate the other possibility, wh…
We discuss the importance of large scale strong magnetic field in the removal of angular momentum outward, as well as the possible origin of different kinds of magnetic barrier in advective, geometrically thick, sub-Keplerian accretion flows around black holes. The origin of this large scale strong magnetic field near the event horizon is due to the advection of the magnetic flux by the accreting gas from the environment, say, the interstellar medium or a companion star, because of flux freezing. In this simplest vertically averaged, 1.5-dimensional disc model, we choose the maximum upper limi…
We present the results of nine simulations of radiatively-inefficient magnetically arrested disks (MADs) across different values of the black hole spin parameter $a_*$: $-0.9$, $-0.7$, $-0.5$, $-0.3$, 0, 0.3, 0.5, 0.7, and 0.9. Each simulation was run up to $t \gtrsim 100,000\,GM/c^3$ to ensure disk inflow equilibrium out to large radii. We find that the saturated magnetic flux level, and consequently also jet power, of MAD disks depends strongly on the black hole spin, confirming previous results. Prograde disks saturate at a much higher relative magnetic flux and have more powerful jets than…
The radiative and jet efficiencies of thin magnetized accretion disks around black holes (BHs) are affected by BH spin and the presence of a magnetic field that, when strong, could lead to large deviations from Novikov-Thorne (NT) thin disk theory. To seek the maximum deviations, we perform general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) simulations of radiatively efficient thin (half-height $H$ to radius $R$ of $H/R\approx 0.10$) disks around moderately rotating BHs with $a/M=0.5$. First, our simulations, each evolved for more than $70,000r_g/c$ (gravitational radius $r_g$ and speed of light…
We explore the formation, energetics, and geometry of relativistic jets along with the variability of their central engine. We study both fast and slowly rotating black holes and address our simulations to active galaxy (AGN) centers and gamma ray burst (GRB) engines. The structured jets are postulated to account for emission properties of high energy sources across the mass scale, launched from stellar mass black holes in GRBs and from supermassive black holes in AGNs. Their active cores contain magnetized accretion disks and rotation of the Kerr black hole provides a mechanism for jet launch…
Black Hole-Disk Interactions in Magnetically Arrested Active Galactic Nuclei: General Relativistic Magnetohydrodynamic Simulations Using A Time-Dependent, Binary Metric
