Abstract Details

Name: Amit Shukla
Affiliation: Discipline of Astronomy, Astrophysics and Space Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Indore
Conference ID: ASI2021_458
Title : Spinning black hole powers jet by magnetic flux
Authors and Co-Authors : Amit Shukla
Abstract Type : Invited
Abstract Category : Plenary
Abstract : Accreting black holes are suspected of converting rotational energy into Poynting flux escaping along their rotation axes. The high-energy emission of blazars allows to study the regions where the jets dissipate energy by accelerating particles to ultrarelativistic energies. A transient peak-in-peak variability pattern in blazar lightcurves was predicted from kinetic simulations of relativistic magnetic reconnection. The pattern is associated with the dissipation of magnetic energy through plasmoids undergoing relativistic reconnection. This variability pattern has now been found on time scales of minutes in the gamma-ray lightcurve of the bazar 3C 279 using Fermi-LAT data shedding new light on the riddle of jet launching. The study is consistent with the jet of 3C 279 initially being magnetic-energy dominated before it turns into the kinetic-energy dominated flow imaged with very-long baseline radio interferometry on parsec scales.