Rayleigh-Taylor instability of ionization front around black holes
Abstract
We examine the role of ionizing radiation emitted from black holes (BHs) in suppressing the growth of the Rayleigh-Taylor instability (RTI) across the ionization front (I-front) that forms when the gas fueling the BH is neutral. We use radiation-hydrodynamic simulations to show that the RTI is suppressed for non-accelerating fronts on all scales resolved in our simulations. A necessary condition for the stability of the I-front is that the radius of the Str\"omgren sphere is larger than the Bondi radius. When this condition is violated the I-front collapses producing an accretion luminosity burst. Transient growth of the RTI occurs only during the accretion burst when the effective acceleration in the frame of reference of the I-front increases significantly due to the rapid expansion of the Str\"omgren sphere.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1308.5250,
title = {Rayleigh-Taylor instability of ionization front around black holes},
author = {KwangHo Park and Massimo Ricotti and Tiziana Di Matteo and Christopher S. Reynolds},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1308.5250},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
9 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS