Prague Relativistic Astrophysics

Vladimir Karas

In an informal talk I will report on work done recently in collaboration with Ondrej Kopacek and Devaky Kunneriath. Based on a paper in Classical and Quantum Gravity (to appear).

Understanding the mechanisms of particle acceleration from the vicinity of black holes poses a challenge. Electromagnetic effects are thought to be a prime suspect, but details still need an explanation. To this end, we study a three-dimensional structure of oblique magnetic fields near a rotating black hole in vacuum. It has been proposed that such a set-up can lead to efficient acceleration when plasma is injected near a magnetic null point. We focus our attention especially on the magnetic field in the immediate neighborhood of the magnetic null point, which was previously shown to occur in the equatorial plane. By employing the Line-Integral-Convolution (LIC) method, we visualize the magnetic field lines and explore the electric lines rising out of the equatorial plane.