Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3H8, Canada.
Science. 2010 Aug 20;329(5994):927-30. doi: 10.1126/science.1191766.
The coalescence of supermassive black holes--a natural outcome when galaxies merge--should produce gravitational waves and would likely be associated with energetic electromagnetic events. We have studied the coalescence of such binary black holes within an external magnetic field produced by the expected circumbinary disk surrounding them. Solving the Einstein equations to describe black holes interacting with surrounding plasma, we present numerical evidence for possible jets driven by these systems. Extending the process described by Blandford and Znajek for a single, spinning black hole, the picture that emerges suggests that the electromagnetic field extracts energy from the orbiting black holes, which ultimately merge and settle into the standard Blandford-Znajek scenario. Emissions along these jets could potentially be observable at large distances.
超大质量黑洞的合并——星系合并的自然结果——应该会产生引力波，并可能与高能电磁事件有关。我们研究了在预期环绕双星的盘周围产生的外部磁场中，这种双星黑洞的合并。通过求解描述黑洞与周围等离子体相互作用的爱因斯坦方程，我们提供了这些系统可能驱动喷流的数值证据。扩展了 Blandford 和 Znajek 对单个旋转黑洞的描述过程，出现的画面表明，电磁场从轨道上的黑洞中提取能量，最终合并并落入标准的 Blandford-Znajek 情景中。沿着这些喷流的发射物在大距离上可能是可观测的。
