On the nature of the Blandford-Znajek mechanism
Abstract
Description
It is widely accepted in the astrophysical community that the event horizon plays crucial role in the Blandford-Znajek mechanism of extraction of rotational energy of black holes. In fact, this view is a quintessence of the Membrane Paradigm of black holes which suggests that the event horizon, or rather the so-called stretched horizon, is similar to a rotating conducting sphere of finite resistivity. In this paper we argue that this interpretation is rather misleading and the proper explanation of the Blandford-Znajek mechanism has to be sought in the properties of the ergospheric region of black holes.
To appear in The Proceedings of The Third Sakharov Conference on Physics, Moscow, 2002
To appear in The Proceedings of The Third Sakharov Conference on Physics, Moscow, 2002