Fast and furious: reconnection-powered emission in black hole jets and coronae

Lorenzo Sironi (Columbia University)

March 11, 2024

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Abstract: In the most extreme astrophysical sources, dissipation of the dominant magnetic energy via magnetic reconnection—a process by which opposite field lines annihilate, releasing their energy to the plasma — leads to efficient particle acceleration and powerful emission. In black hole jets and coronae, reconnection operates in the “relativistic” regime, where the magnetic field energy exceeds the rest-mass energy of the plasma. With radiative particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations and analytical arguments, I will show that particle acceleration by reconnection can solve a number of observational puzzles. I will demonstrate that reconnection can naturally explain the limb-brightened radio emission of AGN jets, and it likely is the hidden engine powering the mysterious hard X-ray “coronal” emission of X-ray binaries. I will also argue that reconnection in the coronal regions of NGC 1068 may be the source of the TeV neutrinos recently detected by IceCube.