Misc,

Stability of Force-Free Magnetospheres

, and .
(Jun 18, 2014)

Abstract

We analyze the dynamical evolution of a perturbed force-free magnetosphere of a rotating black hole, which is described by the Blanford-Znajek solution in the stationary limit. We find that the electromagnetic field perturbations can be classified into two categories: "trapped modes" and "traveling waves". The trapped modes are analogous to the vacuum (without plasma) electromagnetic quasinormal modes in rotating black hole spacetimes, but with different eigenfrequencies and wave functions, due to their coupling with background electromagnetic field and currents. The travelling waves propagate freely to infinity or the black hole horizon along specific null directions, and they are closely related to the no-scattering Poynting flux solutions discovered by Brennan, Gralla and Jacobson. We expect this study to illuminate the dynamical behavior of force-free magnetospheres as well as to shed light on the path to new exact solutions.

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