They compared turbulence in black hole accretion disks

2024-08-30 16:20:09

Artist’s impression of disc accretion disorder. The inset shows the magnetic field changes calculated using the simulation in this study. -YOHEI KAWAZURA

MADRID, 30 years ago. (EUROPE PRESS) –

Next generation supercomputers have produced high-resolution simulations of turbulence in structures called accretion disks that surround black holes.

An accretion disk, as its name implies, is a disk-shaped gas that is surrounded by a central black hole.

There is great interest in studying the unique and dimensional properties of black holes. However, Black holes do not allow light to escape so they cannot be observed directly by telescopes. To discover black holes and study them, we observe how they affect their environment. Accretion disks are a way to observe the effects of black holes indirectly, as they emit electromagnetic radiation that can be detected with telescopes.

“A precise simulation of the behavior of accretion discs significantly improved our understanding of the physical phenomena surrounding black holes“explain in a word Yohei Kawazura, from Tohoku University and a member of the research team. “It provides important information for interpreting observational data from the Event Horizon Project.”

Researchers use supercomputers such as RIKEN’s “Fugaku” (the world’s fastest computer until 2022) and NAOJ’s (National Astronomical Observatories of Japan) “ATERUI II” to perform unprecedented high-resolution simulations. Although numerical simulations of accretion discs have already been performed, no one has considered the inertial scale due to the lack of computational resources.

This study is the first to be successfully replicated “inertial zone” which connects the large and small eddies in the turbulence of the accretion disks.

“Slow magnetosonic waves” are also found to dominate this range. This finding explains why ions are selectively heated in accretion disks. Turbulent electric fields in accretion disks interact with charged particles, Some accelerators are extremely powerful.

In magnetohydronomy, magnetosonic waves (slow and fast) and Alfvén waves are the basic types of waves. Slow magnetosonic waves are found to dominate the inertial range, carrying twice as much energy as Alfvén waves. The study also shows a fundamental difference between accretion disk turbulence and solar wind turbulence, where Alfvén waves dominate.

This development is expected to improve the physical interpretation of observational data from radio telescopes focused on regions near black holes, according to the authors, whose findings were published in Science Advances.