Overview

Researchers at University of Tsukuba conducted innovative simulations of spinning black holes grounded in general relativity, which clarified that the ultraluminous accretion disk (i.e., gaseous spiral surrounding a black hole) exhibits a precessional motion driven by the black hole's spin. This finding underscores the potential of this spin to be the primary driver of the periodic fluctuations in luminosity observed within these ultraluminous accretion disks.

This study was published as Asahina and Ohsuga “General relativistic radiation-MHD simulations of Precessing Tilted Super-Eddington Disks,” in The Astrophysical Journal on September 17, 2024. The research was carried out using computational resources such as the Fugaku supercomputer at RIKEN and the dedicated astronomy supercomputer ATERUI Ⅱ at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. For more information, please refer to the Press Release from the University of Tsukuba. (October 17, 2024)

Figure 1: Conceptual image of a black hole. (Credit: Hiroyuki Takahashi, Ken Ohsuga, Hirotaka Nakayama, 4D2U Project, NAOJ)
Download: [PNG (1.1 MB)]

Publication Information

Title: "General relativistic radiation-MHD simulations of Precessing Tilted Super-Eddington Disks"
Authors: Y. Asahina and K. Ohsuga
Journal: The Astrophysical Journal
DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ad6cd9

Supercomputer used in this research

ATERUI II at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) was used to develop the code for the simulations performed by the research team. ATERUI II is operated at NAOJ Mizusawa Campus (Oshu, Iwate) with a theoretical peak performance of 3.087 Pflops. (Image Credit: NAOJ)

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Related Links

University of Tsukuba: "Influence of a Black Hole’s Spin: First Evidence of Precession in Ultraluminous Accretion Disks"