Magnetic Hair and Reconnection in Black Hole Magnetospheres

Bransgrove, Ashley, Bart Ripperda, and Alexander Philippov, Magnetic Hair and Reconnection in Black Hole Magnetospheres, Phys. Rev. Lett., 127, 055101 (2021) (ADS)

The cartoon

(click on the image for a larger version)

It had to happen: our favorite cartoon topic of field lines reconnecting, seen or imagined in many various forms around the Earth, the Sun, planets, stars, and compact objects, also shows up here in black hole environments. Black holes are seldom mentioned in this Archive, of course, but see some context here, for example. Around a black hole the plasma environment must be incredibly different, not to say probably incredibly ill-understood as well.

Date: 2021 August 20