English

Kerr Geodesics, the Penrose Process and Jet Collimation by a Black Hole

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2023-01-18 v3 Astrophysics

Abstract

We re-examine the possibility that astrophysical jet collimation may arise from the geometry of rotating black holes and the presence of high-energy particles resulting from a Penrose process, without the help of magnetic fields. Our analysis uses the Weyl coordinates, which are revealed better adapted to the desired shape of the jets. We numerically integrate the 2D-geodesics equations. We give a detailed study of these geodesics and give several numerical examples. Among them are a set of perfectly collimated geodesics with asymptotes ρ=ρ1\rho =\rho_{1} parallel to the zz- axis, with ρ1\rho_{1} only depending on the ratios QE21\frac{\mathcal{Q}}{E^{2}-1} and aM\frac{a}{M}, where aa and MM are the parameters of the Kerr black hole, EE the particle energy and Q\mathcal{Q} the Carter's constant.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.gr-qc/0702123,
  title  = {Kerr Geodesics, the Penrose Process and Jet Collimation by a Black Hole},
  author = {J. Gariel and M. A. H. MacCallum and G. Marcilhacy and N. O. Santos},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:gr-qc/0702123},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

Accepted by Astronomy and Astrophysics. AA style with 3 EPS figures. Content amended after AA's refereeing. Discussion of geodesics also corrected and expanded earlier. Conclusions amended accordingly