Related papers: The thermal-viscous disk instability model in the …
Black holes (BHs) surrounded by accretion disks are present in the Universe at different scales of masses, from microquasars up to the active galactic nuclei (AGNs). The current picture remains ad hoc due to the complexity of the magnetic…
Accretion discs around black holes power some of the most luminous objects in the Universe. Discs that are misaligned to the black hole spin can become warped over time by Lense-Thirring precession. Recent work has shown that strongly…
(abridged) The accretion disk in AGN is expected to produce strong outflows, in particular a UV-line driven wind. Despite providing a good fit to the data, current spectral models of the X-ray spectrum of AGN observed through an accretion…
The standard thin disk model predicts that when the accretion rate is over a small fraction of the Eddington rate, which corresponds to $L \ga 0.06 L_{Edd}$, the inner region of the disk is radiation-pressure-dominated and thermally…
Active galactic nuclei (AGN) light curves observed with different wavebands show that the variability in longer wavelength bands lags the variability in shorter wavelength bands. Measuring these lags, or reverberation mapping, is used to…
There are strong suggestions that the disk-like accretion flow onto massive black hole in AGN is disrupted in its innermost part (10-100 Rg), possibly due to the radiation pressure instability. It may form a hot optically thin quasi…
Optically thick accretion disks are considered to be important ingredients of luminous AGN. The claim of their existence is well supported by observations and recent years brought some progress in understanding of their dynamics. However,…
We present the results of local, vertically stratified, radiation magnetohydrodynamic shearing box simulations of magnetorotational instability (MRI) turbulence for a (hydrogen poor) composition applicable to accretion disks in AM CVn type…
Recurring outbursts associated with matter flowing onto compact stellar remnants (black-holes, neutron stars, white dwarfs) in close binary systems, provide strong test beds for constraining the poorly understood accretion process. The…
The response of advection-dominated accretion disks to local disturbances is examined by one-dimensional numerical simulations. It is generally believed that advection-dominated disks are thermally stable. We, however, find that any…
Analogous to the HR diagram for stars, the thermal equilibrium curve encodes the thermodynamics of accretion disks by expressing the local balance between heating -- primarily via viscous dissipation -- and cooling -- typically through…
We introduce a new model for understanding AGN continuum variability. We start from a Shakura--Sunyaev thin accretion disc with a steady-state radial temperature profile $T(R)$ and assume that the variable flux is due to axisymmetric…
We consider the combined role of the thermal ionization, magneto-rotational and gravitational instabilities in thin accretion disks around supermassive black holes. We find that in the portions of the disk unstable to the ionization…
Disk continuum reverberation mapping is one of the primary ways we learn about active galactic nuclei (AGN) accretion disks. Reverberation mapping assumes that time-varying X-rays incident on the accretion disk drive variability in…
The long term X-ray spectral variability of ten active galactic nuclei (AGN) shows a positive spectral index-flux correlation for each object (Sobolewska & Papadakis 2009). An inner advection dominated accretion flow (ADAF) may connect to a…
We study the structure of accretion disks around supermassive black holes in the radial range $30\sim 100$ gravitational radii, using a three dimensional radiation magneto-hydrodynamic simulation. For typical conditions in this region of…
We propose a variable ADAF disk model for X-ray binary systems. In this model, the accretion flow consists of an outer thin disk and an inner optically thick advection-dominated accretion flow (ADAF) torus. The size of the turbulent ADAF is…
The presence of the warm absorber of considerable optical depth is seen in many AGN. We show that this medium may affect significantly the optical/UV spectrum of an AGN by backscattering a fraction of the total radiation flux towards the…
The characteristic timescale ($\tau$) of continuum variability of the accretion disk in active galactic nuclei (AGNs) is known to be related to the thermal timescale, which is predicted to scale with AGN luminosity ($L$) and restframe…
We fit the UV/optical lightcurves of the Seyfert 1 galaxy Mrk 817 to produce maps of the accretion disk temperature fluctuations $\delta T$ resolved in time and radius. The $\delta T$ maps are dominated by coherent radial structures that…