Numerical Simulation of Radiatively driven Transonic Relativistic Jets

TL;DR

This paper presents numerical simulations demonstrating how radiation from an accretion disk can accelerate, collimate, and reduce angular momentum in relativistic jets, revealing new insights into jet dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a self-consistent relativistic simulation framework showing radiation-driven acceleration and collimation of transonic relativistic jets, including effects on angular momentum.

Findings

Jets can reach relativistic speeds from low initial velocities.

Radiation acts as a collimating agent for jets.

Radiation reduces the angular momentum of rotating jets.

Abstract

We perform the numerical simulations of axisymmetric, relativistic, optically thin jets under the influence of the radiation field of an accretion disk. We show that starting from a very low injection velocity at the base, jets can be accelerated to relativistic terminal speeds when traveling through the radiation field. The jet gains momentum through the interaction with the radiation field. We use a relativistic equation of state for multi-species plasma, which self-consistently calculates the adiabatic index for the jet material. All the jet solutions obtained are transonic in nature. In addition to the acceleration of the jet to relativistic speeds, our results show that the radiation field also acts as a collimating agent. The jets remain well collimated under the effect of radiation pressure. We also show that if the jet starts with a rotational velocity, the radiation field will reduce the angular momentum of the jet beam.