Near-horizon Kerr Magnetosphere
High Energy Physics - Theory
2016-05-25 v2 High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Abstract
We exploit the near-horizon conformal symmetry of rapidly spinning black holes to determine universal properties of their magnetospheres. Analytic expressions are derived for the limiting form of the magnetosphere in the near-horizon region. The symmetry is shown to imply that the black hole Meissner effect holds for free Maxwell fields but is generically violated for force-free fields. We further show that in the extremal limit, near-horizon plasma particles are infinitely boosted relative to accretion flow. Active galactic nuclei powered by rapidly spinning black holes are therefore natural sites for high-energy particle collisions.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1602.01833,
title = {Near-horizon Kerr Magnetosphere},
author = {Samuel E. Gralla and Alexandru Lupsasca and Andrew Strominger},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1602.01833},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
8 pages, 2 figures. v2: minor edits, matches published version