Related papers: Electron Heating in Hot Accretion Flows
When the accretion rate is more than a small fraction of Eddington, the inner regions of accretion disks around black holes are expected to be radiation-dominated. However, in the alpha-model, these regions are also expected to be thermally…
We extend and reconcile recent work on turbulence and particle heating in advection-dominated accretion flows. For approximately equipartition magnetic fields, the turbulence primarily heats the electrons. For weaker magnetic fields, the…
In many black hole systems, the accretion disk is expected to be misaligned with respect to the black hole spin axis. If the scale height of the disk is much smaller than the misalignment angle, the spin of the black hole can tear the disk…
A magnetic field was recently shown to enhance field-parallel heat conduction in a strongly correlated plasma whereas cross-field conduction is reduced. Here we show that in such plasmas, the magnetic field has the additional effect of…
We characterize the nature of thin, axisymmetric, inviscid, accretion flows of cold adiabatic gas with zero specific energy in the vicinity of a black hole by the specific angular momentum. Using two-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations in…
Current simulations of hot accretion flows around black holes assume either a single-temperature gas or, at best, a two-temperature gas with thermal ions and electrons. However, processes like magnetic reconnection and shocks can accelerate…
A variety of nonthermal characteristics like kinetic, e.g., temperature, anisotropies and suprathermal populations (enhancing the high energy tails of the velocity distributions) are revealed by the in-situ observations in the solar wind…
Just as correlations between fluctuating radial and azimuthal velocities produce a coherent stress contributing to the angular momentum transport in turbulent accretion disks, correlations in the velocity and temperature fluctuations…
We present a systematic shearing-box investigation of MRI-driven turbulence in a weakly collisional plasma by including the effects of an anisotropic pressure stress, i.e. anisotropic (Braginskii) viscosity. We constrain the pressure…
Hyper-accreting discs occur in compact-object mergers and collapsars, and may power gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). We calculate the microscopic viscosity and resistivity of plasma in these discs, and discuss the implications for their global…
Fully kinetic simulations are applied to the study of 2D anti-parallel reconnection, elucidating the dynamics by which the electron fluid maintains force balance within both the electron diffusion region (EDR) and the ion diffusion region…
We report the results of 1D particle-in-cell simulations of ultrarelativistic shock waves in proton-electron-positron plasmas. We consider magnetized shock waves, in which the upstream medium carries a large scale magnetic field, directed…
We analyze three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations of a nonradiative accretion flow around a black hole using a pseudo-Newtonian potential. The flow originates from a torus initially centered at 100 gravitational…
Electron heating in an ultracold neutral plasma is modeled using classical molecular dynamics simulations in the presence of an externally applied magnetic field. A sufficiently strong magnetic field is found to reduce disorder induced…
The time dependent evolution of the accretion disk around black hole is computed. The classical description of the $\alpha$-viscosity is adopted so the evolution is driven by the instability operating in the innermost radiation-pressure…
The vertical temperature structure of a protoplanetary disk bears on several processes relevant to planet formation, such as gas and dust grain chemistry, ice lines and convection. The temperature profile is controlled by irradiation from…
The presence of nuclear pasta is expected to modify the transport properties in the mantle of neutron stars. The non-spherical geometry of the pasta nuclear clusters leads to anisotropies in the collision frequencies, impacting the thermal…
Density inhomogeneities are ubiquitous in space and astrophysical plasmas, in particular at contact boundaries between different media. They often correspond to regions that exhibits strong dynamics on a wide range of spatial and temporal…
We study the accretion of collisionless plasma onto a rotating black hole from first principles using axisymmetric general-relativistic particle-in-cell simulations. We carry out a side-by-side comparison of these results to analogous…
We report on the second phase of our study of slightly rotating accretion flows onto black holes. We consider magnetohydrodynamical (MHD) accretion flows with a spherically symmetric density distribution at the outer boundary, but with…