Related papers: Particle acceleration in the vacuum gaps in black …
We investigate the electrostatic acceleration of electrons and positrons in the vicinity of the event horizon, applying the pulsar outer-gap model to black hole magnetospheres. During a low accretion phase, the radiatively inefficient…
Around a rapidly rotating black hole (BH), when the plasma accretion rate is much less than the Eddington rate, the radiatively inefficient accretion flow (RIAF) cannot supply enough MeV photons that are capable of materializing as pairs.…
Supermassive black holes are believed to be the central power house of active galactic nuclei. Applying the pulsar outer-magnetospheric particle accelerator theory to black-hole magnetospheres, we demonstrate that an electric field is…
The detection of rapidly variable gamma-ray emission in active galactic nuclei has generated renewed interest in magnetospheric particle acceleration and emission scenarios. In order to explore its potential, we study the possibility of…
Black holes can launch powerful jets through the Blandford-Znajek process. This relies on enough plasma in the jet funnel to conduct the necessary current. However, in some low luminosity active galactic nuclei, the plasma supply near the…
Black holes that accrete far below the Eddington limit are believed to accrete through a geometrically thick, optically thin, rotationally supported plasma that we will refer to as a radiatively inefficient accretion flow (RIAF). RIAFs are…
When a black hole accretes plasmas at very low accretion rate, an advection-dominated accretion flow (ADAF) is formed. In an ADAF, relativistic electrons emit soft gamma-rays via Bremsstrahlung. Some MeV photons collide with each other to…
(Abridged) An issue of considerable interest in the theory of jet formation by the Blandford-Znajek mechanism, is how plasma is being continuously supplied to the magnetosphere to maintain it in a force-free state. Injection of…
Non-thermal magnetospheric processes in the vicinity of supermassive black holes have attracted particular attention in recent times. Gap-type particle acceleration accompanied by curvature and Inverse Compton radiation could in principle…
We calculate the advection/diffusion of the large-scale magnetic field threading an ADAF, and find that the magnetic field can be dragged inward by the accretion flow efficiently, if the magnetic Prandtl number P~1. This is due to the large…
The environs of supermassive black holes are among the universe's most extreme phenomena. Understanding the physical processes occurring in the vicinity of black holes may provide the key to answer a number of fundamental astrophysical…
The massive black holes in most faint active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and even normal galaxies are still accreting gases, though their accretion rates are very low. Radiatively inefficient accretion flows (RIAFs) are supposed in these faint…
Black holes are known to launch powerful relativistic jets and emit highly variable gamma radiation. How these jets are loaded with plasma remains poorly understood. Spark gaps are thought to drive particle acceleration and pair creation in…
We have investigated electro-magnetic (EM) wave pulses in a jet from a neutrino driven accretion flow (NDAF) around a black hole (BH). NDAFs are massive accretion disks whose accretion rates of $\dot{M}\approx 0.01 - 10…
It was suggested that the relativistic jets in gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are powered via the Blandford-Znajek (BZ) mechanism or the annihilation of neutrinos and anti-neutrinos from a neutrino cooling-dominated accretion flow (NDAF). The…
In the presence of a magnetic field, rotational energy can be extracted from black holes via the Blandford-Znajek mechanism. We use self-similar advection dominated accretion (ADAF) models to estimate the efficiency of this mechanism for…
In this paper I propose that the inner part of a black hole accretion inflow ($< 100 r_{g}$) may enter a magnetically-dominated, magnetosphere-like phase in which the strong, well-ordered fields play a more important role than weak,…
We re-examine the possibility of ultrahigh energy cosmic rays being accelerated in nearby dormant quasars. We particularize our study to heavy nuclei to accommodate the spectrum and nuclear composition recently reported by the Pierre Auger…
To test the role of large-scale magnetic fields in accretion processes, we study dynamics of charged test particles in vicinity of a black hole immersed into an asymptotically uniform magnetic field. Using the Hamiltonian formalism of…
The rapidly variable, very high-energy (VHE) gamma-ray emission from Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) has been frequently associated with non-thermal processes occurring in the magnetospheres of their supermassive black holes. The present work…