On Black Hole Spins and Dichotomy of Quasars

Abstract

Most quasars are known to be radio quiet and according to the ``spin paradigm'', which connects their radio-loudness with the value of the black hole spin, they must harbor very slowly rotating black holes. On the other hand, quasars are powered by accretion which tends to increase the spin of the black hole. We show that the Blandford-Znajek mechanism is not efficient enough to counteract the spinning up of black holes by an accretion disk, regardless of the accretion rate. We establish conditions under which it is possible to obtain low values of the black hole spin, in the scenario involving a sequence of many accretion events with random angular momenta. Our results are used to select possible evolutionary scenarios which can explain radio bimodality of quasars in terms of the ``spin paradigm''.