English

The pattern of accretion flow onto Sgr A*

Astrophysics 2016-08-30 v2

Abstract

The material accreting onto Sgr A* most probably comes from the nearby stars. We analyze the pattern of this flow at distances of a fraction of a parsec and we argue that the net angular momentum of this material is low but non-negligible, and the initially supersonic disk accretion changes into subsonic flow with constant angular momentum. Next we estimate the flow parameters at a distance RBHLR_{BHL} from the black hole and we argue that for the plausible parameter range the accretion flow is non-stationary. The inflow becomes supersonic at distance of 104Rg\sim 10^4 R_g but the solution does not continue below the horizon and the material piles up forming a torus, or a ring, at a distance of a few up to tens of Schwarzchild radii. Such a torus is known to be unstable and may explain strong variability of the flow in Sgr A*. Our considerations show that the temporary formation of such a torus seems to be unavoidable. Our best fitting model predicts a rather large accretion rate of around 4106M/yr4 \cdot 10^{-6} M_{\odot}/yr directly on Sgr A*. We argue that magnetic fields in the flow are tangled and this allows our model to overcome the disagreement with the Faraday rotation limits.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0604516,
  title  = {The pattern of accretion flow onto Sgr A*},
  author = {Monika Moscibrodzka and Tapas K. Das and Bozena Czerny},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0604516},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

10 pages,7 figures, accepted to MNRAS, references added to section 3.5 and to bibliography

R2 v1 2026-07-22T09:06:59.479Z