Concurrence of the Blandford-Payne Process and the Bardeen-Petterson Effect: Theoretical Prediction and its Observational Evidences

TL;DR

This paper predicts a coupling between the Blandford-Payne jet formation process and the Bardeen-Petterson effect, providing observational evidence and a method to measure galactic magnetic fields.

Contribution

It introduces a theoretical framework for the coupling of two key astrophysical processes and suggests observational strategies to support this coupling.

Findings

Conditions for the coupling are derived.

Proposes observational signatures of the coupled processes.

Provides a new method to estimate galactic magnetic field strength.

Abstract

Although the Blandford-Payne process, the standard model for the production of AGN jet outflow, has been fully acknowledged and long-known in both the theoretical Astrophysics and observational Astronomy communities, subsequent research works to gain observational supports have been quite rare. In the present work, therefore, we would like to suggest a likely event and encourage its observation which demonstrates observational supports for the Blandford-Payne process. That is, we propose the coupling of it to the well-known Bardeen-Petterson effect. In order for this set-up to comply with our objective stated above, however, the two coupled processes need to be well-resolved. We, therefore, carefully study and present the condition for this to take place. We also point out that this major concern of our present work allows us to measure the strength of the intra-galactic magnetic field which has been known to be uneasy and unclear even in the galaxy observation Astronomy community for a long time.