Related papers: Testing the Propagating Fluctuations Model with a …
For the past twenty-five years, nearly all analyses of accretion disk dynamics have assumed that stress inside the disk is locally proportional to pressure (the "alpha-model") and that this stress goes to zero at the marginally stable…
We present a comprehensive analysis of super-Eddington black hole accretion simulations that solve the GRMHD equations coupled with angle-discretized radiation transport. The simulations span a range of accretion rates, two black hole…
We use a global magnetohydrodynamic simulation of a geometrically thin accretion disk to investigate the locality and detailed structure of turbulence driven by the magnetorotational instability (MRI). The model disk has an aspect ratio $H…
The power spectrum of the X-ray fluctuations of accreting black holes often consists of two broad humps. We quantitatively investigate the hypothesis that the lower frequency hump orig- inates from variability in a truncated thin accretion…
Using high-resolution general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) simulations, we investigate accretion flows around spinning black holes and identify three distinct accretion states. Our results suggest the origin of the complex…
High resolution observations of Sgr A* have revealed a wide variety of phenomena, ranging from intense rapid flares to quasi-periodic oscillations, making this object an ideal system to study the properties of low luminosity accreting black…
We present three-dimensional MHD simulations of rotating radiatively inefficient accretion flows onto black holes. In the simulations, we continuously inject magnetized matter into the computational domain near the outer boundary, and we…
We examine the small-scale dynamics of black hole accretion disks in which radiation pressure exceeds gas pressure. Local patches of disk are modeled by numerically integrating the equations of radiation MHD in the flux-limited diffusion…
The stresses produced by magnetorotational turbulence can provide effective angular momentum transport in accretion disks. However, questions remain about the ability of simulated disks to reproduce observationally inferred…
We analyze a suite of global magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) accretion disk simulations in order to determine whether scaling laws for turbulence driven by the magnetorotational instability, discovered via local shearing box studies, are globally…
Magnetic connections to the plunging region can exert stresses on the inner edge of an accretion disk around a black hole. We recompute the relativistic corrections to the thin-disk dynamics equations when these stresses take the form of a…
We study a truncated accretion disk using a well-resolved, semi-global magnetohydrodynamic simulation that is evolved for many dynamical times (6096 inner disk orbits). The spectral properties of hard state black hole binary systems and…
An accreting massive black hole (MBH) in a galactic nucleus is surrounded by a dense stellar cluster. We analyze and simulate numerically the evolution of a thin accretion disk due to its internal viscous torques, due to the frame-dragging…
We present a set of four three-dimensional, general relativistic, radiation MHD simulations of black hole accretion at super-critical mass accretion rates, $\dot{M} > \dot{M}_{\rm Edd}$. We use these simulations to study how disk properties…
We use global three dimensional radiation magneto-hydrodynamical simulations to study accretion disks onto a $5\times 10^8M_{\odot}$ black hole with accretion rates varying from $\sim 250L_{Edd}/c^2$ to $1500 L_{Edd}/c^2$. We form the disks…
It has long been thought that black hole accretion flows are driven by magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence, and there are now many general relativistic global simulations illustrating the dynamics of this process. However, many challenges…
The angular momentum of gas feeding a black hole (BH) is typically misaligned with respect to the BH spin, resulting in a tilted accretion disk. Rotation of the BH drags the surrounding space-time, manifesting as Lense-Thirring torques that…
We report new global ideal MHD simulations for thin accretion disks (with thermal scale height H/R=0.1 and 0.05) threaded by net vertical magnetic fields. Our computations span three orders of magnitude in radius, extend all the way to the…
Grid-based magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations have proven invaluable for the study of astrophysical accretion disks. However, the fact that angular momentum transport in disks is mediated by MHD turbulence (with structure down to very…
We study the spatial and temporal behavior of fluid in fully three-dimensional, general relativistic, magnetohydrodynamical simulations of both tilted and untilted black hole accretion flows. We uncover characteristically greater…