Episodic Jets from Black Hole Accretion Disks

Abstract

Several active galactic nuclei and microquasars are observed to eject plasmoids that move at relativistic speeds. We envisage the plasmoids as pre-existing current carrying magnetic flux ropes that were initially anchored in the accretion disk corona. The plasmoids are ejected outwards via a mechanism called the toroidal instability (TI). The TI, which was originally explored in the context of laboratory tokamak plasmas, has been very successful in explaining coronal mass ejections from the Sun. Our model predictions for plasmoid trajectories compare favorably with a representative set of multi-epoch observations of radio emitting knots from the radio galaxy 3C 120, which were preceded by dips in X-ray intensity.