Axisymmetric, Nonstationary Black Hole Magnetospheres: Revisited

An axisymmetric, stationary, general-relativistic, electrodynamic engine model of an active galactic nucleus was formulated by Macdonald and Thorne that consisted of a supermassive black hole surrounded by a plasma magnetosphere and a magnetized accretion disk. Based on this initial formulation, a nonstationary, force-free version of their model was constructed by Park & Vishniac (PV), with the simplifying assumption that the poloidal component of the magnetic field line velocity be confined along the radial direction in cylindrical polar coordinates. In this paper, we derive the new, nonstationary “Transfield Equation,” which was not specified in PV. If we can solve this “Transfield Equation” numerically, then we will understand the axisymmetric, nonstationary black hole magnetosphere in more rigorous ways.