A General Relativistic Magnetohydrodynamic Simulation of Jet Formation

Abstract

We have performed a fully three-dimensional general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) simulation of jet formation from a thin accretion disk around a Schwarzschild black hole with a free-falling corona. The initial simulation results show that a bipolar jet (velocity ~0.3c) is created, as shown by previous two-dimensional axisymmetric simulations with mirror symmetry at the equator. The three-dimensional simulation ran over 100 light crossing time units (tau S =r S /c, where r S ≡2GM/c 2), which is considerably longer than the previous simulations. We show that the jet is initially formed as predicted owing in part to magnetic pressure from the twisting of the initially uniform magnetic field and from gas pressure associated with shock formation in the region around r=3r S. At later times, the accretion disk becomes thick and the jet fades resulting in a wind that is ejected from the surface of the thickened (torus-like) disk. It should be noted that no streaming matter from a donor is included at the outer boundary in the simulation (an isolated black hole not binary black hole). The wind flows outward with a wider angle than the initial jet. The widening of the jet is consistent with the outward-moving torsional Alfvén waves. This evolution of disk-jet coupling suggests that the jet fades with a thickened accretion disk because of the lack of streaming material from an accompanying star.