Particle acceleration in the vacuum gaps in black hole magnetospheres

Abstract

We consider particle acceleration in vacuum gaps in magnetospheres of black holes powered through Blandford-Znajek mechanism and embedded into radiatively-inefficient accretion flow (RIAF) environment. In such situation the gap height is limited by the onset of gamma-gamma pair production on the infrared photons originating from the RIAF. We numerically calculate acceleration and propagation of charged particles taking into account the detailed structure of electric and magnetic field in the gap and in the entire black hole magnetosphere, radiative energy losses and interactions of gamma rays produced by the propagated charged particles with the background radiation field of RIAF. We show that the presence of the vacuum gap has clear observational signatures. The spectra of emission from gaps embedded into a relatively high luminosity RIAF are dominated by the inverse Compton emission with a sharp, super-exponential cut-off in the very-high-energy gamma-ray band. The cut-off energy is determined by the properties of the RIAF and is largely independent of the structure of magnetosphere and geometry of the gap.The spectra of the gap residing in low-luminosity RIAFs are dominated by synchrotron / curvature emission with the spectra extending into 1-100 GeV energy range. We also consider the effect of possible acceleration of protons in the gap and find that proton energies could reach the ultra-high-energy cosmic ray (UHECR) range only in extremely low luminosity RIAFs.