Reconnection influences jet formation and the active regions in black hole accretion disk coronae

Just like the Sun, black hole (BH) accretion disks can be endowed with a dilute highly magnetized plasma atmosphere called a corona. The magnetic field lines in such an accretion disk corona are anchored, just like in the solar case, to the underlying heavier plasma, which is here the accretion disk. The disk, in turn, can agitate the field line footpoints, leading to reconnection-mediated magnetic relaxation of the corona above and, hence, to particle acceleration and high-energy radiation. Due to a scarcity of first-principles models, many aspects of the corona – including the impact of magnetic field lines connecting the disk to the central black hole – remain poorly understood. In this contribution, we present our recent efforts to model, using general relativistic particle-in-cell simulations, how a black hole couples to and feeds on its accretion disk corona. We find that the coronal magnetic scale height strongly impacts where reconnection occurs (whether mostly on disk-disk or disk-BH field lines), the energy released as radiation, and whether a large-scale relativistic jet is launched. These results may shed light on X-ray binary state transitions and the peculiar changing-look active galactic nucleus 1ES 1927+654.