A TWO-DIMENSIONAL BLAST WAVE IN RELATIVISTIC MAGNETOHYDRODYNAMICS

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Abstract
The blast wave produced by a star-like object in a magnetic field is studied numerically in the approximation of ideal, fully relativistic magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). Waves of this type are observed to evolve along three episodes. At early time an outgoing shock front and an ingoing rarefaction wave is established. The ingoing rarefaction wave steepens, and gives rise to dust formation in the core. The steep rarefaction wave front becomes an ingoing shock. An annular region of high magnetic pressure about the equatorial plane deforms this shock front radially, whereby it becomes prolate along the axis of symmetry. The core is subsequently refilled as this shock front converges. Subsequent collapse in the center gives rise to high pressures, familiar from the well-known converging shock problem in nonrelativistic hydrodynamics, and high densities unique to the relativistic description. The results are compared with spherical blast waves in relativistic hydrodynamics, where a similar three episodes can be found and where collapse of the interior shock at the center constitutes a fluid singularity. It remains an open question whether such fluid singularity persists in the full MHD problem. The computations employ the covariant equations of constraint-free MHD in divergence form introduced in earlier work. The magnetic field is kept divergence free to within machine round-off error.

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