Simulations of Jets Driven by Black Hole Rotation

The origin of jets emitted from black holes is not well understood, however there are two possible energy sources, the accretion disk or the rotating black hole. Magnetohydrodynamic simulations show a well-defined jet that extracts energy from a black hole. If plasma near the black hole is threaded by large-scale magnetic flux, it will rotate with respect to asymptotic infinity creating large magnetic stresses. These stresses are released as a relativistic jet at the expense of black hole rotational energy. The physics of the jet initiation in the simulations is described by the theory of black hole gravitohydromagnetics.Comment: Science VOL 305., pg. 978 8/13/04. Link to movies is http://geo.phys.spbu.ru/~ego/ Note that movies are 3-7 mb and can take awhile to downloa

Simulation of Mercury's magnetosheath with a combined hybrid-paraboloid model

In this paper we introduce a novel approach for modeling planetary magnetospheres that involves a combination of the hybrid model and the paraboloid magnetosphere model (PMM); we further refer to it as the combined hybrid model. While both of these individual models have been successfully applied in the past, their combination enables us both to overcome the traditional difficulties of hybrid models to develop a self-consistent magnetic field and to compensate the lack of plasma simulation in the PMM. We then use this combined model to simulate Mercury's magnetosphere and investigate the geometry and configuration of Mercury's magnetosheath controlled by various conditions in the interplanetary medium. The developed approach provides a unique comprehensive view of Mercury's magnetospheric environment for the first time. Using this setup, we compare the locations of the bow shock and the magnetopause as determined by simulations with the locations predicted by stand-alone PMM runs and also verify the magnetic and dynamic pressure balance at the magnetopause. We also compare the results produced by these simulations with observational data obtained by the magnetometer on board the MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft along a dusk-dawn orbit and discuss the signatures of the magnetospheric features that appear in these simulations. Overall, our analysis suggests that combining the semiempirical PMM with a self-consistent global kinetic model creates new modeling possibilities which individual models cannot provide on their own.Peer reviewe