2017MNRAS.466.2294R

Jet powers in many radio galaxies with extended radio structures appear to exceed their associated accretion luminosities. In systems with very low accretion rates, this is likely due to the very low accretion luminosities resulting from radiatively inefficient accretion flows. In systems with high accretion rates, the accretion flows are expected to be radiatively efficient, and the production of such powerful jets may require an accretion scenario, which involves magnetically arrested discs (MADs). However, numerical simulations of the MAD scenario indicate that jet production efficiency is large only for geometrically thick accretion flows and scales roughly with (H/R)², where H is the disc height and R is the distance from the black hole. Using samples of FR II radio galaxies and quasars accreting at moderate accretion rates, we show that their jets are much more powerful than predicted by the MAD scenario. We discuss possible origins of this discrepancy, suggesting that it can be related to approximations adopted in magnetohydrodynamic simulations to treat optically thick accretion flow within the MAD zone, or may indicate that accretion discs are geometrically thicker than the standard theory predicts.