Cubed Sphere: Simulating Tilted Black Hole Accretion Disk and Their Effects on Astrophysical Jets
Student: Tri Nguyen
Major: Physics and Astrophysics
Mentor: Dr. Chris Fragile
Department: Physics and Astronomy
Cubed Sphere: Simulating Tilted Black Hole Accretion Disk and Their Effects on Astrophysical Jets
This poster provides an update on our efforts to simulate precession of tilted accretion disks in orbit about a rotating black hole using the cubed-sphere grid. The main motivation for this research is to assess what impact a precessing disk has on the orientation and power of relativistic jets associated with it. Precession, in this case, is caused by relativistic torques from a rotating black hole acting on the tilted disk. Since jets are an important instrument of feedback of accreting black holes on their environments, it is important to study them at their source. We used the cubed-sphere grid, as it eliminates one of the most troubling features of a spherical-polar grid, i.e., the pole, while retaining an approximately spherical symmetry. We found correlations between the disk and jet twist, indicating that our jets follow the precession of the disk over time. Interestingly enough, the disk seems to align with the black hole throughout the simulation while the jets became more tilted. However, this is probably due to fluctuations In jet matter and the tilt angle stays relatively similar. The power plots show the jets pushing to massive outer radius but decreasing in power until they seemingly die out at later time. Our next step will be to help further sustain the jets.