Screw instability in black hole magnetospheres and a stabilizing effect of field-line rotation

The screw instability of magnetic field is a mechanism for prohibiting a generation of strongly twisted field lines in large scales. If it can work in black hole magnetospheres, the global axisymmetric structure and the main process of energy release will be significantly influenced. In this paper, we study the instability condition in the framework of the variational principle, paying special attention to a stabilizing effect due to field-line rotation against the screw-unstable modes satisfying the well-known Kruskal-Shafranov criterion. The basic formulation for the stability analysis of rotating force-free fields in Kerr geometry is provided. Then, for the practical use of the analytical method, the stationary configuration is assumed to be cylindrical, and we treat the long-wave mode perturbations excited at large distances from the central black hole, where the strength of gravity becomes negligibly small. This allows us to derive clearly the new criterion dependent on the rotational angular velocity of magnetic field lines, and the implications of the results obtained for magnetic activities of jets driven by a black hole are briefly discussed.