Session CM1 - Mini-conference on Astrophysical Jets I.
ORAL session, Monday afternoon, November 15
Room 100/101, SCC
Powerful radio, and in some cases optical and gamma ray, emitting jets are observed to emanate from many compact accreting objects, from stellar mass black holes to super massive black holes in galactic nuclei. The jets are widely thought to arise from the twisting of an ordered magnetic field threading a differentially rotating accretion disk which acts to magnetically extract angular momentum and energy from the disk. Two main regimes have been discussed, hydromagnetic jets, which have a significant mass flux and have energy and angular momentum carried by both matter and electromagnetic field and, Poynting jets, where the mass flux is small and energy and angular momentum are carried predominantly by the electromagnetic field. Here, we describe recent theoretical work on the formation of Poynting jets from magnetized accretion disks. Further, we describe new relativistic, fully-electromagnetic, particle-in-cell simulations of the formation of jets from accretion disks. Laboratory Z-pinch experiments promise to further our understanding of the origin and nature of astrophysical jets.