Radiative acceleration of relativistic jets from accretion discs around black holes

TL;DR

This paper investigates how radiation from accretion discs around black holes can accelerate jets to ultra-relativistic speeds, using numerical simulations to explore conditions and limits of radiative acceleration.

Contribution

The study provides the first detailed numerical analysis of radiative acceleration of electron-proton and electron-positron jets from thick and slim accretion discs, demonstrating the potential for pair-dominated jets to reach ultra-relativistic velocities.

Findings

Pair-dominated jets can attain ultra-relativistic speeds through radiation driving.

Radiative acceleration can overcome previous speed limits near black holes.

Conditions for the failure of radiative acceleration are discussed.

Abstract

Matter falling onto black holes, {also called} accretion discs, emit intense high-energy radiation. Accretion discs during {hard to hard intermediate} spectral states also emit bipolar outflows. Radiation drag was supposed to impose the upper limit on the terminal speed. It was later shown that a radiation field around an advective accretion disc imposes no upper limit on speed, about a few hundred of Schwarzschild radius from the disc surface. We {study radiatively driven electron-proton and electron-positron jets, for gemeotrically thick and slim transonic discs} by using numerical simulation. We show that pair-dominated jets can reach ultra-relativistic speeds by radiation driving. We also discuss at what limits radiative acceleration may fail.