Non-null and Force-Free Electromagnetic Configurations in Kerr Geometry

Abstract

Force-Free Electrodynamics (FFE) is known to describe the highly magnetized plasma around pulsars and astrophysical black holes. The equations describing FFE are highly non-linear and the task of finding a well-defined analytical solution has been unyielding. However, FFE can also be understood in terms of 2-dimensional foliations of the ambient 4-dimensional spacetime. The study of the foliations can provide significant insights into the structure of the force-free fields and such foliations can be exploited to generate new null and non-null solutions. In this paper, we present several nonnull solutions to the FFE equations in the Kerr spacetime obtained by applying the aforementioned methods of non-null foliations.