Context. High-resolution radio imaging of active galactic nuclei (AGN) has revealed that the jets of some sources present superluminal knots and transverse stratification. Recent observational projects, such as ALMA and γ-ray telescopes, such as HESS and HESS2 have provided new observational constraints on the central regions of rotating black holes in AGN, suggesting that there is an inner- or spine-jet surrounded by a disk wind. This relativistic spine-jet is likely to be composed of electron-positron pairs extracting energy from the black hole and will be explored by the future γ-ray telescope CTA. Aims. In this article we present an extension to and generalization of relativistic jets in Kerr metric of the Newtonian meridional self-similar mechanism. We aim at modeling the inner spine-jet of AGN as a relativistic light outflow emerging from a spherical corona surrounding a Kerr black hole and its inner accretion disk. Methods. The model is built by expanding the metric and the forces with colatitude to first order in the magnetic flux function. As a result of the expansion, all colatitudinal variations of the physical quantities are quantified by a unique parameter. Unlike previous models, effects of the light cylinder are not neglected. Results. Solutions with high Lorentz factors are obtained and provide spine-jet models up to the polar axis. As in previous publications, we calculate the magnetic collimation efficiency parameter, which measures the variation of the available energy across the field lines. This collimation efficiency is an integral part of the model, generalizing the classical magnetic rotator efficiency criterion to Kerr metric. We study the variation of the magnetic efficiency and acceleration with the spin of the black hole and show their high sensitivity to this integral. Conclusions. These new solutions model collimated or radial, relativistic or ultra-relativistic outflows in AGN or γ-ray bursts. In particular, we discuss the relevance of our solutions to modeling the M 87 spine-jet. We study the efficiency of the central black hole spin to collimate a spine-jet and show that the jet power is of the same order as that determined by numerical simulations.
We use two conformal transformations to represent field lines in the poloidal sub-manifold of Kerr space-time. The first one is based on an embedding in R 3 of a manifold which is conform to the poloidal submanifold. The second one is a planar representation using quasi-isotropic coordinates. We compare plots of the poloidal magnetic field lines in the usual Boyer-Lindquist Cartesian coordinates) and in the conformal representation based on quasi-isotropic coordinates. In a conformal representation these lines appear entering in the horizon perpendicularly to it as deduced through a mathematical perspective conversely to the usual physical approach. We also compare the value of the conformal factor in these two representations.
We propose two approaches to obtain an isometric embedding of the poloidal Kerr submanifold. The first one relies on the convex integration process using the corrugation from a primitive embedding. This allows us to obtain one parameter family of embeddings reaching the limits of an isometric embedding. The second one consists in consecutive numerical resolutions of the Gauss-Codazzi-Mainardi and frame equations. This method requires geometric assumptions near the equatorial axis of the poloidal submanifold to get initial and boundary conditions. The second approach allows to understand some physical properties in the vicinity of a Kerr black hole, in particular the fast increasing ergoregion extent with angular momentum.
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