Kinetic Simulations of Radiative Magnetic Reconnection in the Coronae of Accreting Black Holes

TL;DR

This study uses particle-in-cell simulations to explore how magnetic reconnection in black hole coronae, affected by Compton cooling, produces X-ray emissions and influences plasma dynamics.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed kinetic simulation analysis of radiative magnetic reconnection in black hole coronae, highlighting the weak impact of Compton cooling on reconnection rates.

Findings

Reconnection rate remains similar with or without radiative cooling.

Most plasma in the reconnection layer is kept cold and confined in plasmoids.

Particle energy distribution includes a thermal-like peak and a high-energy tail.

Abstract

We perform two- and three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations of reconnection in magnetically-dominated pair plasmas subject to strong Compton cooling. Reconnection under such conditions operates in accretion disk coronae around black holes, which produce hard X-rays through Comptonization. Our simulations show that most of the plasma in the reconnection layer is kept cold by Compton losses and locked in magnetically-dominated plasmoids with small thermal pressure. Compton drag clears cavities inside plasmoids and affects their bulk motions. These effects, however, weakly change the reconnection rate and the plasmoid size distribution from those in non-radiative reconnection. This demonstrates that the reconnection dynamics is governed by similar magnetic stresses in both cases and weakly affected by thermal pressure. We examine the energy distribution of particles energized by radiative reconnection and observe two components. (1) A mildly-relativistic peak, which results from bulk motions of cooled plasmoids. This component receives most of the dissipated reconnection power and dominates the output X-ray emission. The peak has a quasi-Maxwellian shape with an effective temperature of 100 keV. Thus, it mimics thermal Comptonization used previously to fit hard-state spectra of accreting black holes. (2) A high-energy tail, which receives 20% of dissipated reconnection power. It is populated by particles accelerated impulsively at X-points or "picked up" by fast outflows from X-points. The high-energy particles immediately cool, and their inverse Compton emission explains the MeV spectral tail detected in the hard state of Cyg X-1. Our first-principle simulations support reconnection as a mechanism powering hard X-ray emission from accreting black holes.