Fifty Years of Energy Extraction from Rotating Black Hole: Revisiting Magnetic Penrose Process

Abstract

Magnetic Penrose process (MPP) is not only the most exciting and fascinating process mining the rotational energy of black hole but it is also the favored astrophysically viable mechanism for high energy sources and phenomena. It operates in three regimes of efficiency, namely low, moderate and ultra, depending on the magnetization and charging of spinning black holes in astrophysical setting. In this paper, we revisit MPP with a comprehensive discussion of its physics in different regimes, and compare its operation with other competing mechanisms. We show that MPP could in principle foot the bill for powering engine of such phenomena as ultra-high-energy cosmic rays, relativistic jets, fast radio bursts, quasars, AGNs, etc. Further, it also leads to a number of important observable predictions. All this beautifully bears out the promise of a new vista of energy powerhouse heralded by Roger Penrose half a century ago through this process, and it has today risen in its magnetically empowered version of mid 1980s from a purely thought experiment of academic interest to a realistic powering mechanism for various high-energy astrophysical phenomena.

Influence of Cosmic Repulsion and Magnetic Fields on Accretion Disks Rotating around Kerr Black Holes

“…First, we discuss the role of the external magnetic fields in the charged test particle motion and its connections to the astrophysical processes, namely in the fate of ionized Keplerian disks and its possible relation to the high-frequency quasiperiodic oscillations (HF QPOs) observed in microquasars or some active galactic nuclei [22,31,32]. We emphasize the possible high importance of the Magnetic Penrose Process (MPP) [80] in the case of ionized Keplerian disks and related extreme acceleration of charged particles in the vicinity of the Kerr black hole horizon [10,33,39,81] influenced by radiation-reaction due to synchrotron radiation of escaping particles [36]. 4 Second, we discuss the influence of the external magnetic fields on the special charged toroidal structures levitating above (below) the black hole equatorial plane, complementary to the toroidal charged structures located in the equatorial plane.…”

“…Contrary to the Schwarzschild case with a = 0 where the canonical energy remains the same as the kinetic energy, for the magnetized rotating black holes there is a shift in the canonical energy governed by the non-zero A t component of the electromagnetic potential that allows escaping of the charged particle to infinity along the magnetic field lines -the acceleration due to the electric component of the electromagnetic field can be enormous [33,38]. For example, the escaping particles can undergo extremely efficient MPP reaching an ultra-high energy of the order of 10 21 eV, if the process of acceleration occurs near a supermassive black hole having mass M ∼ 10 10 M surrounded by magnetic field of the order of 10 4 G [10,39,81].…”

Cosmic-Ray Extremely Distributed Observatory

“…The remarkable property of the rotating black hole is the existence of a special region outside the event horizon called the ergosphere, where the energy of a particle relative to infinity can be negative. However, the negative energy states may also appear due to purely electromagnetic interactions between the SMBH and surrounding matter without the need for ergosphere [99,100].…”

Cosmic Ray Extremely Distributed Observatory

“…It is interesting to note that the black hole located at the centre of our Galaxy can accelerate particles up to the energies corresponding to the knee of the cosmic ray spectrum. On the right side of Figure 2 we demonstrate the results of numerical simulation of the magnetic Penrose process [for details, see 100,101,104]. Remarkably, the mechanism operates in viable physical conditions for typical SMBHs, without the need for a large acceleration zone or exotic assumptions for black holes.…”

“…The remarkable property of the rotating black hole is the existence of a special region outside the event horizon called the ergosphere, where the energy of a particle relative to infinity can be negative. However, the negative energy states may also appear due to purely electromagnetic interactions between the SMBH and surrounding matter without the need for ergosphere [100,101].…”