A Model of Magnetically Induced Disc-Corona for Black Hole Binaries

TL;DR

This paper introduces a comprehensive magnetic connection model for black hole accretion systems, explaining energy transfer, corona formation, and spectral characteristics through numerical solutions in Kerr spacetime.

Contribution

It presents a self-consistent global model of magnetically induced disc-corona systems around black holes, incorporating dynamo processes and magnetic flux conservation.

Findings

Black hole spin enhances energy dissipation in the disc.

Corona size is limited by magnetic flux conservation.

Spectral hardness decreases with higher accretion rates and black hole spin.

Abstract

We propose a model of magnetic connection (MC) of a black hole with its surrounding accretion disc based on large-scale magnetic field. The MC gives rise to transport of energy and angular momentum between the black hole and the disc, and the closed field lines pipe the hot matter evaporated from the disc, and shape it in the corona above the disc to form a magnetically induced disc-corona system, in which the corona has the same configuration as the large-scale magnetic field. We numerically solve the dynamic equations in the context of the Kerr metric, in which the large-scale magnetic field is determined by dynamo process and equipartition between magnetic pressure and gas pressure. Thus we can obtain a global solution rather than assuming the distribution of large-scale magnetic field beforehand. The main MC effects lie in three aspects. (1) The rotational energy of a fast-spinning black hole can be extracted, enhancing the dissipation in the accretion disc, (2) the closed field lines provide a natural channel for corona matter escaping from disc and finally falling into black hole, and (3) the scope of the corona can be bounded by the conservation of magnetic flux. We simulate the high-energy spectra of this system by using Monte-Carlo method, and find that the relative hardness of the spectra decreases as accretion rate or black hole spin $a_*$ increases. We fit the typical X-ray spectra of three black-hole binaries (GRO J1655-40, XTE 1118+480 and GX 339-4) in the low/hard or very high state.