General relativistic radiative transfer in black hole systems

Accretion onto compact objects plays a central role in high-energy astrophysics. The presence of a compact object considerably alters the structure and dynamics of the accreting plasma, as well as its radiative emissions. For accreting black holes in Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) this is especially true. A significant fraction of the emission may originate or pass near the event horizon. Strong gravity modifies the radiation from an emission source. Photons no longer propagate in straight lines and experience frequency shifts. Gravitational lensing creates multiple images of an emission source, further modifying its temporal and spectral properties. Addressing these effects, the first part of this thesis formulates the equations of radiative transfer for particles with and without mass in a manifestly covariant form. Using ray-tracing, the observed images and line emission from accretion disks and tori are calculated. The effects of absorption, emission and optical depth gradients are investigated. The second part of this thesis examines scattering in general relativity. The general relativistic Compton scattering kernel and its angular moments are expressed in closed-form for the first time, in terms of hypergeometric functions. This has the advantage of being fast, accurate and not restricted by specific energy ranges. The results are in perfect agreement with semi-analytic calculations and Monte-Carlo simulations of Compton scattering of monochromatic emission lines. Finally, I investigate the effects of variability in the accretion flow. Two models are considered: a plasmoid on a Keplerian orbit around a black hole and a magnetically-driven plasmoid ejection from the disk corona. Deriving a new time-dependent radiative transfer formulation, I calculate this variable emission, presenting the results in the form of spectrograms and lightcurves

Flares in the Galactic Centre – I. Orbiting flux tubes in magnetically arrested black hole accretion discs

Recent observations of Sgr A* by the GRAVITY instrument have astrometrically tracked infrared (IR) flares at distances of ∼10 gravitational radii (rg). In this paper, we study a model for the flares based on 3D general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) simulations of magnetically arrested accretion discs (MADs) that exhibit violent episodes of flux escape from the black hole magnetosphere. These events are attractive for flare modelling for several reasons: (i) the magnetically dominant regions can resist being disrupted via magnetorotational turbulence and shear; (ii) the orientation of the magnetic field is predominantly vertical as suggested by the GRAVITY data; and (iii) the magnetic reconnection associated with the flux eruptions could yield a self-consistent means of particle heating/acceleration during the flare events. In this analysis, we track erupted flux bundles and provide distributions of sizes, energies, and plasma parameter. In our simulations, the orbits tend to circularize at a range of radii from ∼5 to 40rg⁠. The magnetic energy contained within the flux bundles ranges up to ∼1040erg⁠, enough to power IR and X-ray flares. We find that the motion within the magnetically supported flow is substantially sub-Keplerian, in tension with the inferred period–radius relation of the three GRAVITY flares

Jet-torus connection in radio galaxies: Relativistic hydrodynamics and synthetic emission

High-resolution Very-Long-Baseline Interferometry observations of active galactic nuclei have revealed asymmetric structures in the jets of radio galaxies. These asymmetric structures may be due to internal asymmetries in the jet, could be induced by the different conditions in the surrounding ambient medium including the obscuring torus, or a combination of the two. In this paper we investigate the influence of the ambient medium (including the obscuring torus) on the observed properties of jets from radio galaxies. We performed special-relativistic hydrodynamic (RHD) simulations of over-pressured and pressure-matched jets using the special-relativistic hydrodynamics code \texttt{Ratpenat}, which is based on a second-order accurate finite-volume method and an approximate Riemann solver. Using a newly developed emission code to compute the electromagnetic emission, we have investigated the influence of different ambient medium and torus configurations on the jet structure and subsequently computed the non-thermal emission produced by the jet and the thermal absorption due to the torus. To better compare the emission simulations with observations we produced synthetic radio maps, taking into account the properties of the observatory. The detailed analysis of our simulations shows that the observed asymmetries can be produced by the interaction of the jet with the ambient medium and by the absorption properties of the obscuring torus.Comment: 14 pages, 17 figures, submitted to A&

Visibility of black hole shadows in low-luminosity AGN

Accreting black holes tend to display a characteristic dark central region called the black hole shadow, which depends only on space–time/observer geometry and which conveys information about the black hole’s mass and spin. Conversely, the observed central brightness depression, or image shadow, additionally depends on the morphology of the emission region. In this paper, we investigate the astrophysical requirements for observing a meaningful black hole shadow in GRMHD-based models of accreting black holes. In particular, we identify two processes by which the image shadow can differ from the black hole shadow: evacuation of the innermost region of the accretion flow, which can render the image shadow larger than the black hole shadow, and obscuration of the black hole shadow by optically thick regions of the accretion flow, which can render the image shadow smaller than the black hole shadow, or eliminate it altogether. We investigate in which models the image shadows of our models match their corresponding black hole shadows, and in which models the two deviate from each other. We find that, given a compact and optically thin emission region, our models allow for measurement of the black hole shadow size to an accuracy of 5 per cent. We show that these conditions are generally met for all MAD simulations we considered, as well as some of the SANE simulations

Black Hole Flares: Ejection of Accreted Magnetic Flux through 3D Plasmoid-mediated Reconnection

Magnetic reconnection can power bright, rapid flares originating from the inner magnetosphere of accreting black holes. We conduct extremely high-resolution (5376 × 2304 × 2304 cells) general-relativistic magnetohydrodynamics simulations, capturing plasmoid-mediated reconnection in a 3D magnetically arrested disk for the first time. We show that an equatorial, plasmoid-unstable current sheet forms in a transient, nonaxisymmetric, low-density magnetosphere within the inner few Schwarzschild radii. Magnetic flux bundles escape from the event horizon through reconnection at the universal plasmoid-mediated rate in this current sheet. The reconnection feeds on the highly magnetized plasma in the jets and heats the plasma that ends up trapped in flux bundles to temperatures proportional to the jet's magnetization. The escaped flux bundles can complete a full orbit as low-density hot spots, consistent with Sgr A* observations by the GRAVITY interferometer. Reconnection near the horizon produces sufficiently energetic plasma to explain flares from accreting black holes, such as the TeV emission observed from M87. The drop in the mass accretion rate during the flare and the resulting low-density magnetosphere make it easier for very-high-energy photons produced by reconnection-accelerated particles to escape. The extreme-resolution results in a converged plasmoid-mediated reconnection rate that directly determines the timescales and properties of the flare

Kilohertz QPOs in low-mass X-ray binaries as oscillation modes of tori around neutron stars - I

There have been many efforts to explain the dynamical mechanisms behind the phenomenology of quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) seen in the X-ray light curves of low-mass X-ray binaries. Up to now, none of the models can successfully explain all the frequencies observed in the power spectral density of the light curves. After performing several general-relativistic hydrodynamic simulations of non-self-gravitating axisymmetric thick tori with constant specific angular momentum oscillating around a neutron star such as the one associated with the low-mass X-ray binary 4U 1636 − 53, we find that the oscillation modes give rise to QPOs similar to those seen in the observational data. In particular, when matching pairs of kilohertz QPOs from the numerical simulations with those observed, certain combinations reproduce well the observations, provided we take a mass for the neutron star that is smaller than what is generally assumed. At the same time, we find that tori with constant specific angular momentum cannot match the entire range of frequencies observed for 4U 1636−53 due to physical constraints set on their size. Finally, we show that our results are consistent with the observed shifts in QPO frequency that could accompany state transitions of the accretion disc

Using space-VLBI to probe gravity around Sgr A*

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) will soon provide the first high-resolution images of the Galactic Centre supermassive black hole (SMBH) candidate Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), enabling us to probe gravity in the strong-field regime. Besides studying the accretion process in extreme environments, the obtained data and reconstructed images could be used to investigate the underlying spacetime structure. In its current configuration, the EHT is able to distinguish between a rotating Kerr black hole and a horizon-less object like a boson star. Future developments can increase the ability of the EHT to tell different spacetimes apart. We investigate the capability of an advanced EHT concept, including an orbiting space antenna, to image and distinguish different spacetimes around Sgr A*. We use GRMHD simulations of accreting compact objects (Kerr and dilaton black holes, as well as boson stars) and compute their radiative signatures via general relativistic radiative transfer calculations. To facilitate comparison with upcoming and future EHT observations we produce realistic synthetic data including the source variability, diffractive and refractive scattering while incorporating the observing array, including a space antenna. From the generated synthetic observations we dynamically reconstructed black hole shadow images using regularised Maximum Entropy methods. We employ a genetic algorithm to optimise the orbit of the space antenna with respect to improved imaging capabilities and u-v-plane coverage of the combined array (ground array and space antenna and developed a new method to probe the source variability in Fourier space. The inclusion of an orbiting space antenna improves the capability of the EHT to distinguish the spin of Kerr black holes and dilaton black holes based on reconstructed radio images and complex visibilities.Comment: 15 pages, 14 figures, A&A accepte