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Magnetic Reconnection and Hot Spot Formation in Black Hole Accretion Disks by Ripperda, Bart; Bacchini, Fabio; Philippov, Alexander is a scholarly article available to read on EtoBox.

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Hot spots, or plasmoids, forming due to magnetic reconnection in current sheets, are conjectured to power frequent X-ray and near-infrared flares from Sgr A*, the black hole in the center of our Galaxy. It is unclear how, where, and when current sheets form in black-hole accretion disks. We perform axisymmetric general-relativistic resistive magnetohydrodynamics simulations to model reconnection and plasmoid formation in a range of accretion flows. Current sheets and plasmoids are ubiquitous features which form regardless of the initial magnetic field in the disk, the magnetization in the quasi-steady-state phase of accretion, and the spin of the black hole. Within 10 Schwarzschild radii from the event horizon, we observe plasmoids forming, after which they can merge, grow to macroscopic scales of the order of a few Schwarzschild radii, and are ultimately advected along the jet's sheath or into the disk. Large plasmoids are energized to relativistic temperatures via reconnection and contribute to the jet's limb-brightening. We find that only hot spots forming in magnetically arrested disks can potentially explain the energetics of Sgr A* flares. The flare period is determined by th

Author

Ripperda, Bart; Bacchini, Fabio; Philippov, Alexander

Published

2020

Language

EN