Black hole gravitohydromagnetics

Brian Punsly (auth.)9783540769552, 3540769552

Black hole gravitohydromagnetics (GHM) is developed from the rudiments to the frontiers of research in this book. GHM describes plasma interactions that combine the effects of gravity and a strong magnetic field, in the vicinity (ergosphere) of a rapidly rotating black hole. This topic was created in response to the astrophysical quest to understand the central engines of radio loud extragalactic radio sources. The theory describes a “torsional tug of war” between rotating ergospheric plasma and the distant asymptotic plasma that extracts the rotational inertia of the black hole. The recoil from the struggle between electromagnetic and gravitational forces near the event horizon is manifested as a powerful pair of magnetized particle beams (jets) that are ejected at nearly the speed of light. These bipolar jets feed large-scale magnetized plasmoids on scales as large as millions of light years (the radio lobes of extragalactic radio sources). This interaction can initiate jets that transport energy fluxes exceeding 1047 ergs/s.
This second edition of the book is updated throughout and contains a completely new chapter discussing state of the art and results of numerical simulations of ergospheric disk jets occuring in magnetohydrodynamic accretion flows.

Table of contents :
Front Matter….Pages 1-13
Introduction….Pages 1-33
Relativistic Plasma Physics….Pages 34-77
Particle Trajectories in the Ergosphere….Pages 78-101
Vacuum Electrodynamics….Pages 102-151
Magnetically Dominated Time Stationary Perfect MHD Winds….Pages 152-170
Perfect MHD Winds and Waves in the Ergosphere….Pages 171-209
Ergosphere Driven Winds….Pages 210-219
Ergospheric Disk Dynamos….Pages 220-244
Winds From Event Horizon Magnetospheres….Pages 245-306
Applications to the Theory of Extragalactic Radio Sources….Pages 307-341
Numerical Results….Pages 342-381
Back Matter….Pages 1-12