Observational signatures of disk and jet misalignment in images of accreting black holes

Understand

Black hole accretion is one of nature's most efficient energy extraction processes.

• When gas falls in, a significant fraction of its gravitational binding energy is either converted into radiation or flows outwards in the form of black hole-driven jets and disk-driven winds.
• Recently, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), an Earth-size sub-millimetre radio interferometer, captured the first images of M87's black hole.
• These images were analysed and interpreted using general-relativistic magnetohydrodynamics (GRMHD) models of accretion disks with rotation axes aligned with the black hole spin axis.