Dynamo Dominated Accretion and Energy Flow: The Mechanism of Active Galactic Nuclei

An explanation of the magnetic fields of the universe, the central mass concentration of galaxies, the massive black hole of every galaxy, and the AGN phenomena has been an elusive goal. We suggest here the outlines of such a theoretical understanding and point out where the physical understanding is missing. We believe there is an imperative to the sequence of mass flow and hence energy flow in the collapse of a galactic mass starting from the first non-linearity appearing in structure formation following decoupling. This first non-linearity of a two to one density fluctuation, the Lyman-α clouds, ultimately leads to the emission spectra of the phenomenon of AGN, quasars, blazars etc. The over-arching physical principle is the various mechanisms for the transport of angular momentum. We believe we have now understood the new physics of two of these mechanisms that have previously been illusive and as a consequence they impose strong constraints on the initial conditions of the mechanisms for the subsequent emission of the gravitational binding energy. The new phenomena described here are: 1) the Rossby vortex mechanism of the accretion disk viscosity, and 2) the mechanism of the α - Ω dynamo in the accretion disk. The Rossby vortex mechanism leads to a prediction of the black hole mass and rate of energy release and the α - Ω dynamo leads to the generation of the magnetic flux of the galaxy (and the far greater magnetic flux of clusters) and separately explains the primary flux of energy emission as force-free magnetic energy density. This magnetic flux and magnetic energy density separately are the necessary consequence of the saturation of a dynamo created by the accretion disk with a gain greater than unity. The predicted form of the emission of both the flux and the magnetic energy density is a force-free magnetic helix extending axially from the disk a distance depending upon its winding number and radius of its flux surfaces, a distance of Mpc's. This Poynting flux of magnetic energy would be invisible unless the currents bounding the magnetic field are dissipated. By definition of force-free, these currents are parallel to the field and throughout its volume. Therefore the dissipation must be throughout the volume as opposed to the conventional reconnection which takes place only at surface layers. This radically different interpretation of reconnection is supported by the observation of "interruption" events in fusion tokamak experiments. Here, and presumably in the galactic case as well, the parallel currents and their dissipation is mediated by run-away, high energy electrons and ions. It is then natural to seek an explanation for the emission spectrum of the dynamo-produced Poynting flux in the same synchrotron emission associated with the dissipation of these run-away currents. We propose the radically different view that these ultra high energy, run-away electrons directly produce the emission spectra as compared to the published models that assume an acceleration of bulk matter to a γ ∼ 10 and then reconvert this kinetic energy by shock heating into a highly relativistic plasma, γ ∼ 10⁶. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Shock waves on neutron star cores

A numerical model of the transient behavior of a radiation-dominated shock was calculated in order to demonstrate the relatively large initial escape of internal energy that takes place when the opacity law is a positive power of temperature, as for neutrinos,K∼T ². Attention was given to the consequences of diffusive transport of radiation versus local production of internal energy by duplicating the calculation with and without artificial viscosity. It is concluded that a shock formed on the neutron star core of an imploding supernova may radiate its internal energy in electron neutrinos more effectively than had hithertofore been considered.     

Mechanics and control of swimming: a review

The bodies and brains of fish have evolved to achieve control objectives beyond the capabilities of current underwater vehicles. One route toward designing underwater vehicles with similar capabilities is to better understand fish physiological design and control strategies. This paper has two objectives: 1) to review clues to artificial swimmer design taken from fish physiology and 2) to formalize and review the control problems that must be solved by a robot fish. The goal is to exploit fish locomotion principles to address the truly difficult control challenges of station keeping under large perturbations, rapid maneuvering, power-efficient endurance swimming, and trajectory planning and tracking. The design and control of biomimetic swimming machines meeting these challenges will require state-of-the-art engineering and biology.     

Positrons and low energy cosmic rays from supernovae

Burgeret al. (1970) calculated the positron flux from the decay of⁵⁶Co⁵⁶Fe from cosmic rays injected from supernovae. The plasma properties of the ejected matter are determined in the present calculation in order to include the ionization loss of the positrons as the matter expands. It is found that using the matter velocity distribution of previous supernova model calculations that roughly 10% of the positrons escape. The average lifetime in the galaxy due to ionization loss is found to be relatively small, 1.5×10⁵ yr, and with the above injection results in ×3, the observed flux. The same matter velocity distribution is subjected to ionization loss in the galaxy and a steady state low energy, 10E200 MeV, differential flux spectrum is found,J(E)E ^–1.2. This removes the difficulty of the high galactic energy density resulting from a steeper spectrum.     

Automatic solar image motion measurements

The solar seeing image motion has been monitored electronically and absolutely with a 25 cm telescope at three sites along the ridge at the southern end of the Magdalena Mountains west of Socorro, New Mexico. The uncorrelated component of the variations of the optical flux from two points at opposite limbs of the solar disk was continually monitored in 3 frequencies centred at 0.3, 3 and 30 Hz. The frequency band of maximum signal centred at 3 Hz showed the average absolute value of image motion to be somewhat less than 2 although wide variations from 20 to an extraordinarily quiet day of less than the measurement limit of 1/2 were observed. The observer estimates of combined blurring and image motion were well correlated with electronically measured image motion, but the observer estimates gave a larger value × 2 presumable because the electronic measurement gave only the uncorrelated motion of opposite limbs. Approximately 30% of the total solar time would allow spatial position measurements of solar features to a precision 2 and, from the visual estimates, blurring limited measurements to a precision 4.     

Relationship between high-energy physical phenomena on the sun and in astrophysics

High energy phenomena on the surface of the Sun are manifestations of part of the solar dynamo cycle. Convection and magnetic field give rise to unstable, twisted flux loops that become solar flares when the resistive tearing mode proceeds to the nonlinear limit. If such twisted flux loops did not dissipate rapidly due to an enhanced resistivity, then the dynamo would not work. The act of dissipation leads to intense heating and acceleration leading to X-rays and accelerated particles. The particles in turn give rise to hard X-rays, gamma rays, neutrons, and solar cosmic rays. In high-energy astrophysics such phenomena occur in accretion disks around compact objects like black holes in quasars and SS433. The resulting acceleration may explain the observed extremely high-energy cosmic rays of up to 10²⁰ eV and the high-energy gamma rays of 10¹² to 10¹⁵ eV. These high energies are more readily explained by acceleration E parallel to B as opposed to stochastic shock acceleration. The anisotropy and localization of gamma rays from solar flares potentially may indicate which mechanism is prevalent.