266 research outputs found
A Phase Lag between Disk and Corona in GRMHD Simulations of Precessing Tilted Accretion Disks
In the course of its evolution, a black hole (BH) accretes gas from a wide
range of directions. Given a random accretion event, the typical angular
momentum of an accretion disc would be tilted by 60 relative to
the BH spin. Misalignment causes the disc to precess at a rate that increases
with BH spin and tilt angle. We present the first general-relativistic
magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) simulations spanning a full precession period of
highly tilted (60), moderately thin () accretion discs around
a rapidly spinning () BH. While the disc and jets precess in phase,
we find that the corona, sandwiched between the two, lags behind by . For spectral models of BH accretion, the implication is that hard
non-thermal (corona) emission lags behind the softer (disc) emission, thus
potentially explaining some properties of the hard energy lags seen in Type-C
low frequency quasi-periodic oscillations in X-Ray binaries. While strong jets
are unaffected by this disc-corona lag, weak jets stall when encountering the
lagging corona at distances black hole radii. This interaction may
quench large-scale jet formation.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, submitted to MNRAS, see YouTube playlist for 3D
renderings:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDO1oeU33GwmwOV_Hp9s7572JdU8JPSS
Observational signatures of disk and jet misalignment in images of accreting black holes
Black hole accretion is one of nature's most efficient energy extraction processes. When gas falls in, a significant fraction of its gravitational binding energy is either converted into radiation or flows outwards in the form of black hole-driven jets and disk-driven winds. Recently, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), an Earth-size sub-millimetre radio interferometer, captured the first images of M87's black hole. These images were analysed and interpreted using general-relativistic magnetohydrodynamics (GRMHD) models of accretion disks with rotation axes aligned with the black hole spin axis. However, since infalling gas is often insensitive to the black hole spin direction, misalignment between accretion disk and black hole spin may be a common occurrence in nature. In this work, we use the general-relativistic radiative transfer (GRRT) code \texttt{BHOSS} to calculate the first synthetic radio images of (highly) tilted disk/jet models generated by our GPU-accelerated GRMHD code \texttt{HAMR}. While the tilt does not have a noticeable effect on the system dynamics beyond a few tens of gravitational radii from the black hole, the warping of the disk and jet can imprint observable signatures in EHT images on smaller scales. Comparing the images from our GRMHD models to the 43 GHz and 230 GHz EHT images of M87, we find that M87 may feature a tilted disk/jet system. Further, tilted disks and jets display significant time variability in the 230 GHz flux that can be further tested by longer-duration EHT observations of M87
Minimal Model for Sand Dunes
We propose a minimal model for aeolian sand dunes. It combines an analytical
description of the turbulent wind velocity field above the dune with a
continuum saltation model that allows for saturation transients in the sand
flux. The model provides a qualitative understanding of important features of
real dunes, such as their longitudinal shape and aspect ratio, the formation of
a slip face, the breaking of scale invariance, and the existence of a minimum
dune size.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, replaced with publishd versio
Templated Quasicrystalline Molecular Ordering
Quasicrystals are materials with long-range ordering but no periodicity. We report scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) observations of quasicrystalline molecular layers on 5-fold quasicrystal surfaces. The molecules adopt positions and orientations on the surface consistent with the quasicrystalline ordering of the substrate. Carbon-60 adsorbs atop sufficiently separated Fe atoms on icosahedral Al−Cu−Fe to form a unique quasicrystalline lattice, whereas further C60 molecules decorate remaining surface Fe atoms in a quasi-degenerate fashion. Pentacene (Pn) adsorbs at 10-fold symmetric points around surface-bisected rhombic triacontahedral clusters in icosahedral Ag−In−Yb. These systems constitute the first demonstrations of quasicrystalline molecular ordering on a templat
Corridors of barchan dunes: stability and size selection
Barchans are crescentic dunes propagating on a solid ground. They form dune
fields in the shape of elongated corridors in which the size and spacing
between dunes are rather well selected. We show that even very realistic models
for solitary dunes do not reproduce these corridors. Instead, two instabilities
take place. First, barchans receive a sand flux at their back proportional to
their width while the sand escapes only from their horns. Large dunes
proportionally capture more than they loose sand, while the situation is
reversed for small ones: therefore, solitary dunes cannot remain in a steady
state. Second, the propagation speed of dunes decreases with the size of the
dune: this leads -- through the collision process -- to a coarsening of barchan
fields. We show that these phenomena are not specific to the model, but result
from general and robust mechanisms. The length scales needed for these
instabilities to develop are derived and discussed. They turn out to be much
smaller than the dune field length. As a conclusion, there should exist further
- yet unknown - mechanisms regulating and selecting the size of dunes.Comment: 13 pages, 13 figures. New version resubmitted to Phys. Rev. E.
Pictures of better quality available on reques
Atomic-layer deposited thulium oxide as a passivation layer on germanium
A comprehensive study of atomic-layer deposited thulium oxide (Tm2O3) on germanium has been conducted using x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), vacuum ultra-violet variable angle spectroscopic ellipsometry, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), and electron energy-loss spectroscopy. The valence band offset is found to be 3.05 ± 0.2 eV for Tm2O3/p-Ge from the Tm 4d centroid and Ge 3p3/2 charge-corrected XPS core-level spectra taken at different sputtering times of a single bulk thulium oxide sample. A negligible downward band bending of ∼0.12 eV is observed during progressive differential charging of Tm 4d peaks. The optical band gap is estimated from the absorption edge and found to be 5.77 eV with an apparent Urbach tail signifying band gap tailing at ∼5.3 eV. The latter has been correlated to HRTEM and electron diffraction results corroborating the polycrystalline nature of the Tm2O3 films. The Tm2O3/Ge interface is found to be rather atomically abrupt with sub-nanometer thickness. In addition, the band line-up of reference GeO2/n-Ge stacks obtained by thermal oxidation has been discussed and derived. The observed low reactivity of thulium oxide on germanium as well as the high effective barriers for holes (∼3 eV) and electrons (∼2 eV) identify Tm2O3 as a strong contender for interfacial layer engineering in future generations of scaled high-κ gate stacks on Ge
H-AMR: A New GPU-accelerated GRMHD Code for Exascale Computing With 3D Adaptive Mesh Refinement and Local Adaptive Time-stepping
General-relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) simulations have
revolutionized our understanding of black-hole accretion. Here, we present a
GPU-accelerated GRMHD code H-AMR with multi-faceted optimizations that,
collectively, accelerate computation by 2-5 orders of magnitude for a wide
range of applications. Firstly, it involves a novel implementation of a
spherical-polar grid with 3D adaptive mesh refinement that operates in each of
the 3 dimensions independently. This allows us to circumvent the Courant
condition near the polar singularity, which otherwise cripples high-res
computational performance. Secondly, we demonstrate that local adaptive
time-stepping (LAT) on a logarithmic spherical-polar grid accelerates
computation by a factor of compared to traditional hierarchical
time-stepping approaches. Jointly, these unique features lead to an effective
speed of zone-cycles-per-second-per-node on 5,400 NVIDIA V100 GPUs
(i.e., 900 nodes of the OLCF Summit supercomputer). We demonstrate its
computational performance by presenting the first GRMHD simulation of a tilted
thin accretion disk threaded by a toroidal magnetic field around a rapidly
spinning black hole. With an effective resolution of
,,, cells, and a total of billion
cells and timesteps, it is among the largest astrophysical
simulations ever performed. We find that frame-dragging by the black hole tears
up the disk into two independently precessing sub-disks. The innermost sub-disk
rotation axis intermittently aligns with the black hole spin, demonstrating for
the first time that such long-sought alignment is possible in the absence of
large-scale poloidal magnetic fields.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, submitted to MNRAS, for the YouTube playlist,
see https://youtu.be/rIOjKUfzcv
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