Fast and furious: reconnection-powered emission in black hole jets and coronae
Lorenzo Sironi (Columbia University) 鈥� March 11, 2024
Abstract
In the most extreme astrophysical sources, dissipation of the dominant magnetic energy via magnetic reconnection鈥攁 process by which opposite field lines annihilate, releasing their energy to the plasma 鈥� leads to efficient particle acceleration and powerful emission. In black hole jets and coronae, reconnection operates in the 鈥渞elativistic鈥� regime, where the magnetic field energy exceeds the rest-mass energy of the plasma. With radiative particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations and analytical arguments, I will show that particle acceleration by reconnection can solve a number of observational puzzles. I will demonstrate that reconnection can naturally explain the limb-brightened radio emission of AGN jets, and it likely is the hidden engine powering the mysterious hard X-ray 鈥渃oronal鈥� emission of X-ray binaries. I will also argue that reconnection in the coronal regions of NGC 1068 may be the source of the TeV neutrinos recently detected by IceCube.
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