Related papers: Collisionless accretion onto black holes: dynamics…
We present the first collisionless realization of two-dimensional axisymmetric black hole accretion consistent with a persistent magnetically arrested disk state. The accretion flow, consisting of an ion-electron disk plasma combined with…
In low-luminosity active galactic nuclei like M87* and Sgr A*, the accretion disk around the central supermassive black hole is tenuous and collisionless. As a result, the usual ideal magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) approximation may not be…
Black holes with accretion rates well below the Eddington rate are expected to be surrounded by low-density, hot, geometrically thick accretion disks. This includes the two black holes being imaged at sub-horizon resolution by the Event…
Diffuse accretion flows near a supermassive black hole are fundamentally weakly collisional. In such weakly collisional plasmas, the ion and electron distribution functions can deviate significantly from thermal equilibrium, and particle…
Relativistic plasmas are central to the study of black hole accretion, jet physics, neutron star mergers, and compact object magnetospheres. Despite the need to accurately capture the dynamics of these plasmas and the implications for…
Astrophysical plasmas in relativistic spacetimes, such as black hole accretion flows, are often weakly collisional and require kinetic modeling to capture non-local transport and particle acceleration. However, the extreme scale separation…
We study the observational signatures of magnetically arrested black hole accretion with non-rotating inflow onto a rotating black hole; we consider a range of angles between the black hole spin and the initial magnetic field orientation.…
The black holes in the Event Horizon Telescope sources Messier 87* and Sagittarius A* (SgrA*) are embedded in a hot, collisionless plasma that is fully described in kinetic theory yet is usually modeled as an ideal, magnetized fluid. In…
The dynamics of black hole magnetospheres critically depend on the black hole spin and on the structure of the accretion flow. In the limit of a Schwarzschild black hole immersed in a zero-net angular momentum flow, accretion is spherical.…
I outline the theory of accretion onto black holes, and its application to observed phenomena such as X-ray binaries, active galactic nuclei, tidal disruption events, and gamma-ray bursts. The dynamics as well as radiative signatures of…
Black holes drive powerful plasma jets to relativistic velocities. This plasma should be collisionless, and self-consistently supplied by pair creation near the horizon. We present general-relativistic collisionless plasma simulations of…
The magnetorotational instability (MRI) is a crucial mechanism of angular momentum transport in a variety of astrophysical accretion disks. In systems accreting at well below the Eddington rate, such as the central black hole in the Milky…
In certain scenarios, the accreted angular momentum of plasma onto a black hole could be low; however, how the accretion dynamics depend on the angular momentum content of the plasma is still not fully understood. We present…
While supermassive binary black holes inspiral toward merger they may also experience significant accretion of matter from a surrounding disk. We study the dynamics of this system, simultaneously describing the evolving spacetime and…
We study the small scale magnetic reconnection above the radiative inefficient accretion flow around massive black hole via 2D magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) numerical simulation, in order to model the blob formation and ejection from the…
Global, general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) simulations of nonradiative, magnetized disks are widely used to model accreting black holes. We have performed a convergence study of GRMHD models computed with HARM3D. The models…
The accretion of a spherically symmetric, collisionless kinetic gas cloud on to a Schwarzschild black hole is analysed. Whereas previous studies have treated this problem by specifying boundary conditions at infinity, here the properties of…
We present the results of three-dimensional global resistive magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations of black hole accretion flows. General relativistic effects are simulated by using the pseudo-Newtonian potential. Initial state is an…
In this work we establish and test methods for implementing dynamical friction for massive black hole pairs that form in large volume cosmological hydrodynamical simulations which include galaxy formation and black hole growth. We verify…
It is likely that nearly all central galactic massive and supermassive black holes are nonradiative: their accretion luminosities are orders of magnitude below what can be explained by efficient black hole accretion within their ambient…