Related papers: New Energy Source Controlled by Gravity Alone?
The characteristic properties of blazars (rapid variability, strong polarization, high brightness) are widely attributed to a powerful relativistic jet oriented close to our line of sight. Despite the spectral energy distributions (SEDs)…
A hyperaccretion disk formed around a stellar mass black hole is a plausible model for the central engine that powers gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). If the central black hole rotates and a poloidal magnetic field threads its horizon, a powerful…
The light-like limit of the Kerr gravitational field relative to a distant observer moving rectilinearly in an arbitrary direction is an impulsive plane gravitational wave with a singular point on its wave front. By colliding particles with…
We investigate stationary accretion of the collisionless Vlasov gas onto the Kerr black hole, occurring in the equatorial plane. At infinity the gas obeys the Maxwell-J\"{u}ttner distribution, restricted to the equatorial plane. In the…
Accreting black holes are thought to emit the bulk of their power in the X-ray band by releasing the gravitational potential energy of the infalling matter. At the same time, they are capable of producing highly collimated jets of energy…
A non-negligible fraction of a Supermassive Black Hole's (SMBH) rest mass energy gets transported into extragalactic space by a remarkable process in jets which are incompletely understood. What are the physical processes which transport…
It is commonly believed that the optical/UV and X-ray emissions in luminous AGN are produced in an accretion disk and an embedded hot corona respectively. The inverse Compton scattering of disk photons by hot electrons in the corona can…
Jets are endemic to both Galactic solar mass and extragalactic supermassive black holes. A recent 86 GHz image of M\,87 shows a jet emerging from the accretion ring around a black hole, providing the first direct observational constraint on…
Exact solutions describing rotating black holes can offer important tests for alternative theories of gravity, motivated by the dark energy and dark matter problems. We present an analytic rotating black hole solution for a class of…
Relying on the Penrose process mechanism, we study the possibility of energy extraction from a binary system composed of two extreme electrostatic black holes (BHs) oppositely charged, separated by a strut described by Bonnor's metric (BM).…
It has recently been pointed out that arbitrary center-of-mass energies may be obtained for particle collisions near the horizon of an extremal Kerr black hole. We investigate this mechanism in cylindrical topology. In particular we…
In an effort to understand the Penrose inequality for black holes with angular momentum, an axisymmetric, vacuum, asymptotically Euclidean initial data set subject to certain quasi-stationary conditions is considered for a case study. A new…
While theoretically established for decades, the Penrose process - energy extraction from rotating black holes - still lacks clear observational evidence. A promising theoretical framework posits magnetic reconnection in the ergosphere as a…
The power of jets from black holes are expected to depend on both the spin of the black hole and the structure of the accretion disk in the region of the last stable orbit. We investigate these dependencies using two different physical…
The Penrose process (PP) is an ingenious mechanism of extracting rotational energy from a rotating black hole, however it was soon realized that it was not very efficient for its astrophysical applications for powering the central engine of…
Mergers of spinning black holes can give recoil velocities from gravitational radiation up to several thousand km/s. A recoiling supermassive black hole in an AGN can retain the inner part of its accretion disk, providing fuel for…
There is strong observational evidence that AGN, Galactic X-ray transients and (probably) $\gamma$-ray bursts are associated with black holes, and that these sources are able to form collimated, ultrarelativistic outflows. There is much…
Active galactic nuclei (AGN) host some of the most energetic phenomena in the Universe. AGN are thought to be powered by accretion of matter onto a rotating disk that surrounds a supermassive black hole. Jet streams can be boosted in energy…
For particle collision near rapidly rotating Kerr black holes, the center-of-mass energy can be arbitrarily high if the angular momentum of either of the colliding particles is fine-tuned. Recently, it has been shown that particles which…
The corona is a key component of most luminous accreting black holes, carrying 5 - 30 % of the power and in non-jetted Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), creating all the X-ray emission above $\simeq 1-2$ keV. Its emission illuminates the inner…