Black Hole Gravitohydromagnetics / Edition 2

by Brian Punsly

Overview

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.

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 occurring in magnetohydrodynamic accretion flows.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783540769552
Publisher:	Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Publication date:	12/08/2008
Series:	Astrophysics and Space Science Library , #355
Edition description:	2nd ed. 2009
Pages:	399
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.40(h) x 0.80(d)

Table of Contents

Relativistic Plasma Physics.- Particle Trajectories in the Ergosphere.- Vacuum Electrodynamics.- Magnetically Dominated Time Stationary Perfect MHD Winds.- Perfect MHD Winds and Waves in the Ergosphere.- Ergosphere Driven Winds.- Ergospheric Disk Dynamos.- Winds From Event Horizon Magnetospheres.- Applications to the Theory of Extragalactic Radio Sources.- Numerical Results.

Editorial Reviews

From reviews of 1st edition:

"Black Hole Gravitohydromagnetics is a serious and important book that should be studied and used by every researcher of black hole plasma astrophysics." (Marek Abramovicz: General Relativity and Gravitation, Vol. 35, No. 6, June 2003)

From the Publisher