Term Paper

A strong magnetic field around the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Galaxy

PHL 759 Radio Astronomy

Submitted by

Ankita Niranjan Undergraduate Student (4th year) B.Tech. - Engineering Physics IIT Delhi

Organization
In the first section, I have given a brief overview of the idea contained in the paper, in subsections I provide the details of the problem, the observations made by the Radio Pulsar close to Black hole, the conclusions about RM of Pulsar, and the process of estimation of magnetic field near the Pulsar and near Black hole. In 2nd section, the conclusion is given.

Introduction
What happens near a singularity is of great importance in physics since laws of physics break down at singularity. The universe is believed to be born out of a singularity and keeping in pace with the physics of singularity or near singularity might lead us to the unsolved questions to the origins of universe. After the evidence of existence of Black holes (a singularity in spacetime), efforts had been made to find out how it behaves. Black hole physics poses many questions, such as how the polar jets emerge out of the Black hole(s) that reside at the Galactic centre(s), or what feeds the black hole, what is the mechanism of the material flow inside the Black hole, and many others. This paper (August 2013), gives us plausible answer to some of these questions. The black hole at the center of the Milky Way is a bright source of radio and X-ray light. According to theory, this light is emitted due to hot gas orbiting and falling into the black hole. However, the shape of the gas flow is dictated by the magnetic fields at the galactic center, which are difficult to measure. Astronomers hoped fondly for the discovery of a pulsar, a rapidly rotating remnant of a dead star that generates powerful jets of radio waves. Any magnetic field near the pulsar would affect the radio emissions, allowing researchers to map the environment near the black hole. The wish was granted earlier this year when an X-ray flare revealed the presence of a pulsar within one light-year of the Milky Way's black hole. R.P. Eatough and colleagues measured the light from the pulsar and found it had a strong faraday rotation, an indispensible sign of the presence of magnetic field. If they extrapolate the estimation of magnetic field to the surface of the black hole, it would be sufficient to explain the entire spectrum of emissions from the Milky Way's center.

Black Hole at the heart of Milky Way: The nearest supermassive black hole from earth lies at the centre of the Milky Way. The current empirical evidence for a central massive black hole is based on the analysis of the orbits of more than two dozen stars and from the measurements of the size and motion of the central compact radio source, Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*). These observations conclude beyond any reasonable doubt that this radio source must be a massive black hole of about .

The structure of the dense nuclear star cluster surrounding this black hole is briefed below A dense concentration of fainter stars is centered in the immediate vicinity of the massive black hole. Astoundingly, this star cluster consists of new stars. Surprisingly, new stars have been forming in the vicinity of Sgr A*. This constitutes a remarkable and presently not fully understood paradox of youth.

Accreting Gas: Radio observations have revealed in detail the distribution and dynamics of the cold and ionized gas flowing from the galactic bulge at a few hundred parsecs spiraling down to the distances less than 1 pc. About half of the total mass of molecular gas of the interstellar medium resides in the form of compact giant molecular clouds (GMC). Dynamical models of the cloud kinematics indicate an average in-fall rate of order 102Ms/yr at these radii. At near Schwarzschild radii, the detection of linear polarization of Sgr A* indicates that the mass accretion rate must be very low 106Ms/yr because otherwise extreme Faraday rotation gradients would depolarize the emission. Only about 106 of the gas entering the central molecular zone actually accretes onto the black hole. The mechanism of this accretion is not fully understood. It is believed that magnetic fields shape the motion of the matter, accelerating it in some instances and removing its energy in others, ultimately allowing it to be swallowed by the black hole. But no direct evidence, until now, had been there.

The Radio Emission from SgrA* and need of a Pulsar: Linearly polarized radio waves that pass through a magnetized medium experience Faraday rotation given by , where the rotation measure, ( ) ( ) The radio emission associated with (SgrA*), has

, which is the highest known RM of any source in the Galaxy. However, the radio emission from SgrA*probes only the innermost scales of accretion. To measure the magnetization of the accretion flow on the outermost scales, other polarized radio sources, such as pulsars, are needed. A pulsar closely orbiting SgrA* would prove to be an unparalleled tool for testing the spacetime structure around the black hole.

Detection of a Pulsar: Recently, the NASA Swift X-ray Telescope detected a bright X-ray flare near SgrA*. Subsequent X-ray observations by the NASA NuSTAR telescope resulted in the detection of pulsations with a period of 3.76 s which is indicative of a magnetar, a highly magnetized pulsar, in outburst. During radio observations at the MPIfR Effelsberg Radio Observatory on 28 April 2013, the first weak detection of pulsations, with spin parameters matching those reported by NuSTAR, was made. The pulsar is named PSR J17452900.

Observations: The emission (radio) from the pulsar is highly linearly polarized. By measuring the Faraday rotation in three frequency bands and at three different telescope sites, they derive a RM of ( ) . The RM is the largest measured for any Galactic object other

than SgrA* and is more than an order of magnitude larger than all the other RMs measured to within tens of parsecs of SgrA*. This constrains the magnetized plasma causing the Faraday rotation (the Faraday screen) to be within some 10 parsecs from the Galactic Centre.

Estimation of magnetic field: A frequently used estimate of the magnetic field is , which gives

However, they also used some extra information about the gas in the central 10 pc for a more robust estimate of the magnetic field. Two ionized gas phases in the Galactic Centre interstellar medium towards the line of sight of the pulsar could be associated with the Faraday
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screen: a warm component from the northern arm of the gas streamer SgrA West26, which passes behind SgrA*, and a diffuse hot component seen in the X-ray emission with . The warm gas in the northern arm has a width of , electron densities of .

measured from radio recombination lines, and a magnetic field of

Consequently, the Faraday screen must be associated with the hot gas component, for which no magnetic field estimates yet exist. The density in the hot gas shows a radial fall-off as a function of r. They found that ( ) ( ) . Because SgrA* accretes

from this magnetized hot phase, density and magnetic field will further increase at smaller radii. Emission models of SgrA* require magnetic fields of about 30100G to explain the synchrotron radiation from near the event horizon. Hence, if the gas falls from (0.12 pc) down to a few Schwarzschild radii, a simple Schwarzschild radii scaling would be enough to

provide a magnetic field of several hundred gauss. Moreover, the availability of ordered magnetic fields would make the proposed formation of a jet-like outflow in SgrA* viable. Superequipartition magnetic fields could also suppress accretion and help to explain the low accretion rate of SgrA*.

Conclusion
Since the magnetars constitute only a small fraction of the pulsar population and the excess DM towards the Galactic Centre is not too large, they concluded that there should be additional observable radio pulsars in the same region. Such pulsars could be used to map out the accretion region around the black hole in more detail Additionally, a pulsar closer in to the black hole would experience relativistic effects as its photons pass through the strong gravitational field. Such measurements would provide a detailed test of general relativity in a much stronger gravitational field than has been done before.

References
1. Eatough R. et al., Nature 501, 391-394 (2013). 2. Genzel, R., Eisenhauer, F. & Gillessen, S., Rev. Mod. Phys. 82, 31213195 (2010). 3. Mori, K. et al, Astrophys. J. 770, L23 (2013).
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