Kyle Parfrey (Einstein Fellow), Alexander Philippov, Benoît Cerutti (IPAG), First-Principles Plasma Simulations of Black-Hole Jet Launching, Phys.Rev.Lett. 122 (2019) no.3, 035101

Black holes are known for their voracious appetites, binging on matter with such ferocity that not even light can escape once it’s swallowed up. Less understood, though, is how black holes purge energy locked up in their rotation, jetting near-light-speed plasmas into space to opposite sides in one of the most powerful displays in the universe. These jets can extend outward for millions of light years.

New simulations combine decades-old theories to provide new insight about the driving mechanisms in the plasma jets that allow them to steal energy from black holes’ powerful gravitational fields and propel it far from their gaping mouths. The simulations could provide a useful comparison for high-resolution observations from the Event Horizon Telescope, an array that is designed to provide the first direct images of the regions where the plasma jets form.

The simulations, for the first time, unite a theory that explains how electric currents around a black hole twist magnetic fields into forming jets, with a separate theory explaining how particles crossing through a black hole’s point of no return – the event horizon – can appear to a distant observer to carry in negative energy and lower the black hole’s overall rotational energy. It’s like eating a snack that causes you to lose calories rather than gaining them. The black hole actually loses mass as a result of slurping in these “negative-energy” particles. Computer simulations have difficulty in modeling all of the complex physics involved in plasma-jet launching, which must account for the creation of pairs of electrons and positrons, the acceleration mechanism for particles, and the emission of light in the jets.  These simulations incorporate new numerical techniques that provide the first model of a collisionless plasma – in which collisions between charged particles do not play a major role – in the presence of a strong gravitational field associated with a black hole. The simulations naturally produce effects known as the Blandford-Znajek mechanism, which describes the twisting magnetic fields that form jets, and a separate Penrose process that describes what happens when negative-energy particles are gulped down by the black hole.

Further readings: LBNL News, Viewpoint: Feeding a Black Hole Jet (APS Physics, Jan. 23, 2019)