Influence of self-gravity on the runaway instability of black hole-torus systems
Abstract
Results from the first fully general relativistic numerical simulations in axisymmetry of a system formed by a black hole surrounded by a self-gravitating torus in equilibrium are presented, aiming to assess the influence of the torus self-gravity on the onset of the runaway instability. We consider several models with varying torus-to-black hole mass ratio and angular momentum distribution orbiting in equilibrium around a non-rotating black hole. The tori are perturbed to induce the mass transfer towards the black hole. Our numerical simulations show that all models exhibit a persistent phase of axisymmetric oscillations around their equilibria for several dynamical timescales without the appearance of the runaway instability, indicating that the self-gravity of the torus does not play a critical role favoring the onset of the instability, at least during the first few dynamical timescales.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1004.3102,
title = {Influence of self-gravity on the runaway instability of black hole-torus systems},
author = {Pedro J. Montero and Jose A. Font and Masaru Shibata},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1004.3102},
year = {2010}
}
Comments
To appear on Phys.Rev.Lett