Near-horizon Kerr Magnetosphere
Samuel E. Gralla, Alexandru Lupsasca, Andrew Strominger

TL;DR
This paper uses near-horizon conformal symmetry of rapidly spinning black holes to derive universal properties of their magnetospheres, revealing conditions for the black hole Meissner effect and implications for high-energy particle collisions.
Contribution
It provides analytic expressions for the near-horizon magnetosphere and clarifies the conditions under which the black hole Meissner effect occurs or is violated.
Findings
Meissner effect holds for free Maxwell fields
Meissner effect is violated for force-free fields
Near-horizon plasma particles are infinitely boosted in the extremal limit
Abstract
We exploit the near-horizon conformal symmetry of rapidly spinning black holes to determine universal properties of their magnetospheres. Analytic expressions are derived for the limiting form of the magnetosphere in the near-horizon region. The symmetry is shown to imply that the black hole Meissner effect holds for free Maxwell fields but is generically violated for force-free fields. We further show that in the extremal limit, near-horizon plasma particles are infinitely boosted relative to accretion flow. Active galactic nuclei powered by rapidly spinning black holes are therefore natural sites for high-energy particle collisions.
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
