Extracting black-hole rotational energy: The generalized Penrose process

• In the case involving particles, the necessary and sufficient condition for the Penrose process to extract energy from a rotating black hole is absorption of particles with negative energies and angular momenta. No torque at the black-hole horizon occurs. In this article we consider the case of arbitrary fields or matter described by an unspecified, general energy-momentum tensor T-mu nu and show that the necessary and sufficient condition for extraction of a black hole's rotational energy is analogous to that in the mechanical Penrose process: absorption of negative energy and negative angular momentum. We also show that a necessary condition for the Penrose process to occur is for the Noether current (the conserved energy-momentum density vector) to be spacelike or past directed (timelike or null) on some part of the horizon. In the particle case, our general criterion for the occurrence of a Penrose process reproduces the standard result. In the case of relativistic jet-producing "magnetically arrested disks," we show that the negative energy and angular-momentum absorption condition is obeyed when the Blandford-Znajek mechanism is at work, and hence the high energy extraction efficiency up to similar to 300% found in recent numerical simulations of such accretion flows results from tapping the black hole's rotational energy through the Penrose process. We show how black-hole rotational energy extraction works in this case by describing the Penrose process in terms of the Noether current.

Ämnesord

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Fysik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Physical Sciences (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

3-DIMENSIONAL MAGNETOHYDRODYNAMIC SIMULATIONS

BLANDFORD-ZNAJEK

MECHANISM

ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI

ELECTROMAGNETIC EXTRACTION

ACCRETION

FLOWS

ENERGETICS

HORIZONS

PLASMA

FIELD

JETS

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