Nonuniform Particle Injection into Black Hole Jets by Radiative Magnetic Reconnection
Astronomical Institute, Graduate School of Science, Tohoku University（东北大学理学研究科天文学研究所）；Frontier Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Sciences, Tohoku University（东北大学前沿学际研究院）
Rin Oikawa, Kenji Toma, Shigeo S. Kimura
备注：
25 pages, 15 figures. Accepted for publication in ApJ
Active galactic nuclei often exhibit highly collimated relativistic plasma outflows launched from the vicinity of their central black holes. One of the key theoretical challenges in understanding black hole jet formation is the origin of the plasma that feeds the jet, which remains poorly understood, particularly in explaining the observed jet emission. In this study, we focus on electron positron pair production generated by high energy photons from non axisymmetric magnetic reconnection near the black hole, as suggested by recent three dimensional general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics simulations. By employing general relativistic ray tracing, we calculate the spatial distribution of the pair production rate in the jet, taking into account photon propagation and collision angles in curved spacetime. We find that our scenario can naturally supply a sufficient amount of plasma to explain the observed radio emission from the M87 jet, even when photon anisotropy is considered. Furthermore, we show that a spinning black hole plays a crucial role in shaping the spartial dsitribution of the pairs, which in turn affects jet acceleration and very high energy emission from the jet base.
Magnetic reconnection in the relativistic and trans-relativistic regimes is able to accelerate particles to hard power law energy spectra $f \propto γ^{-p}$ (approaching $p=1$). The underlying acceleration mechanism that determines the spectral shape is currently a topic of intense investigation. By means of fully kinetic plasma simulations, we carry out a study of particle acceleration during magnetic reconnection in the trans-relativistic regime of a proton-electron plasma. While earlier work in this parameter regime has focused on the effects of electric field parallel to the local magnetic…
Magnetic reconnection in relativistic plasmas is well established as a fast and efficient particle accelerator, capable of explaining the most dramatic astrophysical flares. With particle-in-cell simulations, we demonstrate the importance of non-ideal fields for the early stages ("injection") of particle acceleration. Most of the particles ending up with high energies (near or above the mean magnetic energy per particle) must have passed through non-ideal regions where the assumptions of ideal magnetohydrodynamics are broken (i.e., regions with $E>B$ or nonzero $E_\parallel={\bf E}\cdot {\bf B…
Are $E>B$ regions essential for particle injection in relativistic magnetic reconnection?
University of Colorado, Boulder（科罗拉多大学博尔德分校）；Center for Integrated Plasma Studies, Department of Physics, 390 UCB, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA（科罗拉多大学博尔德分校等离子体综合研究中心物理系）；Los Alamos National Laboratory（洛斯阿拉莫斯国家实验室）；New Mexico Consortium（新墨西哥联盟）；University of Maryland, College Park（马里兰大学帕克分校）；Dartmouth College（达特茅斯学院）
Particle energization in shear flows is invoked to explain non-thermal emission from the boundaries of relativistic astrophysical jets. Yet, the physics of particle injection, i.e., the mechanism that allows thermal particles to participate in shear-driven acceleration, remains unknown. With particle-in-cell simulations, we study the development of Kelvin-Helmholtz (KH) instabilities seeded by the velocity shear between a relativistic magnetically-dominated electron-positron jet and a weakly magnetized electron-ion ambient plasma. We show that, in their nonlinear stages, KH vortices generate k…
We investigate with relativistic MHD simulations the dissipation physics of BL Lac jets, by studying the synchrotron polarization signatures of particles accelerated by the kink instability in a magnetically-dominated plasma column. The nonlinear stage of the kink instability generates current sheets, where particles can be efficiently accelerated via magnetic reconnection. We identify current sheets as regions where s = J d/B is above some predefined threshold (where B is the field strength, J the current density and d the grid scale), and assume that the particle injection efficiency scales …
Synchrotron Gamma-Ray Emission Model of the Giant Outburst of Quasar 3C 279 in 2015 June: Fast Reconnection or Stochastic Acceleration with Electromagnetic Cascade?
Gamma-ray Burst Spectrum with a Time-dependent Injection Rate of High-energy Electrons
虽然伽马射线暴中瞬发辐射的物理起源还没有定论，但以前的研究认为相对论电子的同步辐射是一种很有前途的机制。这些工作通常采用恒定的电子注入率（$Q$），这可能与坡印廷通量主导射流中的电子注入率不一致。在坡印廷通量主导的射流中（例如，ICMART模型，Zhang & Yan 2011），同时发生的磁重联的数量可以随时间快速增长，并导致$Q$随时间增加。本文致力于研究这种情况下的同步辐射光谱。研究发现，随着$Q$的增大，辐射谱明显变硬，当$Q$增大足够快时，可以得到类带状的辐射谱。后者与这样一个事实有关，即在所获得的电子谱的低能区出现凸点形状而不是幂律谱。这种效应可以强烈地硬化低能辐射光谱。结果表明，增加$Q$有助于缓解同步辐射对伽玛暴的“快冷问题”。我们的研究还表明，具有较大发射半径、较小磁重联区长度或较低最小注入电子能量的坡印廷通量支配的喷流更倾向于形成带状辐射谱。我们认为伽玛暴中的带谱可能是低能区电子的同步辐射，其分布呈凸点状。
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 have investigated how kinetic instabilities such as the Weibel instability (WI), the mushroom instability (MI), and the kinetic Kelvin-Helmholtz instability (kKHI) are excited in jets without and with a toroidal magnetic field, and how such instabilities contribute to particle acceleration. In this work we use a new jet injection scheme where an electric current is self-consistently generated at the jet orifice by the jet particles which produce the toroidal magnetic field. We perform five different simulations for a sufficiently long time to examine the non-linear effects of the jet evolut…
Turbulence is often invoked to explain the origin of nonthermal particles in space and astrophysical plasmas. By means of 3D fully kinetic particle-in-cell simulations, we demonstrate that turbulence in low-$β$ plasmas ($β$ is the ratio of plasma pressure to magnetic pressure) accelerates ions and electrons into a nonthermal energy distribution with a power-law energy range. The ion spectrum is harder than the electron one, and both distributions get steeper for higher $β$. We show that the energization of electrons is accompanied by a significant energy-dependent pitch-angle anisotropy, with …
A far-infrared counterpart to the west hot spot of the radio galaxy Pictor A is discovered with the Spectral and Photometric Imaging REceiver (SPIRE) onboard Herschel. The color-corrected flux density of the source is measured as $70.0 \pm 9.9$ mJy at the wavelength of 350 $μ$m. A close investigation into its radio-to-optical spectrum indicates that the mid-infrared excess over the radio synchrotron component, detected with WISE and Spitzer, significantly contributes to the far-infrared band. Thanks to the SPIRE data, it is revealed that the spectrum of the excess is described by a broken powe…
