English

Effect of Electromagnetic Interaction on Galactic Center Flare Components

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2020-07-15 v2 High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

Recently, near-infrared GRAVITY@ESO observations at 2.2μm2.2\,\mu{\rm m} have announced the detection of three bright "flares" in the vicinity of the Galactic center supermassive black hole (SMBH) that exhibited orbital motion at a distance of about 6116 - 11 gravitational radii from an 4×106M\sim 4\times 10^6\, M_{\odot} black hole. There are indications of the presence of a large-scale, organized component of the magnetic field at the Galactic center. Electromagnetic effects on the flare dynamics were previously not taken into account despite the relativistic motion of a plasma in magnetic field leading to the charge separation and nonnegligible net charge density in the plasma. Applying various approaches, we find the net charge number density of the flare components of the order of 10310410^{-3} - 10^{-4} cm3^{-3}, while the particles' total number density is of the order of 10610810^{6} - 10^{8} cm3^{-3}. However, even such a tiny excess of charged particles in the quasi-neutral plasma can significantly affect the dynamics of flare components, which can then lead to the degeneracy in the measurements of spin of the SMBH. Analyzing the dynamics of recent flares in the case of the rapidly rotating black hole, we also constrain the inclination angle between the magnetic field and spin axis to α<50\alpha < 50^{\circ}, as for larger angles, the motion of the hot spot is strongly chaotic.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1912.08174,
  title  = {Effect of Electromagnetic Interaction on Galactic Center Flare Components},
  author = {Arman Tursunov and Michal Zajaček and Andreas Eckart and Martin Kološ and Silke Britzen and Zdeněk Stuchlík and Bozena Czerny and Vladimír Karas},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1912.08174},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

28 pages, 7 figures; to appear in the Astrophysical Journal; accepted version

R2 v1 2026-06-23T12:48:48.686Z