Accelerating AGN jets to parsec scales using general relativistic MHD simulations

Understand

Accreting black holes produce collimated outflows, or jets, that traverse many orders of magnitude in distance, accelerate to relativistic velocities, and collimate into tight opening angles.

• Of these, perhaps the least understood is jet collimation due to the interaction with the ambient medium.
• In order to investigate this interaction, we carried out axisymmetric general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations of jets produced by a large accretion disc, spanning over 5 orders of magnitude in time and distance, at an unprecedented resolution.
• Supported by such a disc, the jet attains a parabolic shape, similar to the M87 galaxy jet, and the product of the Lorentz factor and the jet half-opening angle, $\gamma\theta\ll 1$, similar to values found from very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) observations of active galactic nuclei (AGN) jets; this suggests extended discs in AGN.