Mar 26–28, 2025
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics
America/Toronto timezone

Black Hole Jet Sheath as a Candidate for the Comptonizing Corona

Mar 26, 2025, 10:15 a.m.
15m
PI/4-405 - Bob Room (Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics)

PI/4-405 - Bob Room

Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics

60
Contributed Talk

Speaker

Dr Navin Sridhar (Stanford)

Description

What powers the hard, non-thermal X-rays from accreting compact objects has been a longstanding mystery. In my talk, I will address the underlying question of what energizes the particles of the Comptonizing “corona” against the strong inverse Compton (IC) cooling losses with first-principle particle-in-cell simulations of magnetic reconnection subject to IC cooling in magnetically dominated electron-positron plasmas, and in mildly-magnetized electron-ion plasmas. I will also show---using results of global resistive GRMHD simulations of accreting black holes---that the black hole jet sheath is a site of efficient electromagnetic dissipation through processes such as magnetic reconnection and turbulence. The distribution of bulk motions of the radially outflowing plasma along the jet sheath also resembles a Maxwellian distribution with an effective bulk temperature of a few 100 keV, and this could be a candidate for the Comptonizing corona.

Presenter's Name Navin Sridhar
Presenter's Email Address [email protected]
Keywords Black hole coronae; magnetic dissipation; AGN; X-ray binaries
Recording Permission YES
Virtual Audience Permission YES
Photography Permission YES

Primary author

Dr Navin Sridhar (Stanford)

Co-authors

Dr Andrei Beloborodov (Columbia) Dr Bart Ripperda (CITA) Dr Jordy Davelaar (Princeton) Dr Lorenzo Sironi (Columbia)

Presentation materials

There are no materials yet.

External references