English

Magnetically Driven Accretion in the Kerr Metric III: Unbound Outflows

Astrophysics 2009-11-10 v1

Abstract

We have carried out fully relativistic numerical simulations of accretion disks in the Kerr metric. In this paper we focus on the unbound outflows that emerge self-consistently from the accretion flow. These outflows are found in the axial funnel region and consist of two components: a hot, fast, tenuous outflow in the axial funnel proper, and a colder, slower, denser jet along the funnel wall. Although a rotating black hole is not required to produce these unbound outflows, their strength is enhanced by black hole spin. The funnel-wall jet is excluded from the axial funnel due to elevated angular momentum, and is also pressure-confined by a magnetized corona. The tenuous funnel outflow accounts for a significant fraction of the energy transported to large distances in the higher-spin simulations. We compare the outflows observed in our simulations with those seen in other simulations.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0407092,
  title  = {Magnetically Driven Accretion in the Kerr Metric III: Unbound Outflows},
  author = {Jean-Pierre De Villiers and John F. Hawley and Julian H. Krolik and Shigenobu Hirose},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0407092},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

33 pages, 8 figures, ApJ submitted