Related papers: Photon Damping of Waves in Accretion Disks
Standard models of radiation supported accretion disks generally assume that diffusive radiation flux is solely responsible for vertical heat transport. This requires that heat must be generated at a critical rate per unit volume if the…
Radiation pressure dominated accretion discs around compact objects may have turbulent velocities that greatly exceed the electron thermal velocities within the disc. Bulk Comptonization by the turbulence may therefore dominate over thermal…
We consider the effects of "photon bubble" shock trains on the vertical structure of radiation pressure-dominated accretion disks. These density inhomogeneities are expected to develop spontaneously in radiation-dominated accretion disks…
We consider the effects of advection and radial gradients of pressure and radial drift velocity on the structure of optically thick accretion disks. We concentrate our efforts on highly viscous disks, $\alpha=1.0$, with large accretion…
In low-mass disks, turbulent torques are probably the most important way of redistributing angular momentum. Here we present the theory of turbulent accretion disks. We show the molecular viscosity is far too small to account for the…
The conventional accretion disk lore is that magnetized turbulence is the principal angular momentum transport process that drives accretion. However, when dynamically important large-scale magnetic fields thread an accretion disk, they can…
Understanding the mechanism that drives accretion has been the primary challenge in accretion disk theory. Turbulence provides a natural means of dissipation and the removal of angular momentum, but firmly establishing its presence in disks…
We examine the effects of photon bubble instability in radiation-dominated accretion disks such as those found around black holes in active galactic nuclei and X-ray binary star systems. Two- and 3-D numerical radiation MHD calculations of…
We study the two-dimensional, time-dependent MHD of radiation-driven winds from luminous accretion disks initially threaded by a purely axial magnetic field. The radiation force is mediated primarily by spectral lines. We use ideal MHD to…
We show that a large-scale, weak magnetic field threading a turbulent accretion disk tends to be advected inward, contrary to previous suggestions that it will be stopped by outward diffusion. The efficient inward transport is a consequence…
Mass loss appears to be a common phenomenon among disk-accreting astrophysical systems. An outflow emanating from an accretion disk can act as a sink for mass, angular momentum and energy and can therefore alter the dissipation rates and…
We report results of a three dimensional, high resolution (up to 512^3) numerical investigation of supersonic compressible magnetohydrodynamic turbulence. We consider both forced and decaying turbulence. The model parameters are appropriate…
These notes introduce and review some of the physical principles underlying the theory of astrophysical accretion, emphasizing the central roles of angular momentum transport, angular momentum loss, and radiative cooling in determining the…
(shortened) We calculate the vertical structure of a local patch of an accretion disk in which heating by dissipation of MRI-driven MHD turbulence is balanced by radiative cooling. Heating, radiative transport, and cooling are computed…
Recent observations have revealed slow, coherent temperature fluctuations in AGN disks that propagate both inward and outward at velocities of $\sim 0.01 - 0.1c$, a kind of variability that is distinct from reverberation (mediated by the…
Accretion disc turbulence is investigated in the framework of the shearing box approximation. The turbulence is either driven by the magneto-rotational instability or, in the non-magnetic case, by an explicit and artificial forcing term in…
We investigate the radial transport of magnetic flux in a thin accretion disc, the turbulence being modelled by effective diffusion coefficients (viscosity and resistivity). Both turbulent diffusion and advection by the accretion flow…
The standard equilibrium for radiation-dominated accretion disks has long been known to be viscously, thermally, and convectively unstable, but the nonlinear development of these instabilities---hence the actual state of such disks---has…
We explore the thermodynamic and global structural properties of a local patch of an accretion disk whose parameters were chosen so that radiation pressure and gas pressure would be comparable in magnitude. Heating, radiative transport, and…
The effect of a possible hydrodynamical wind on the nature of hot accretion disk solutions is studied. It is found that the advection dominated branch, in the presence of a wind, maintains the self-similar solution for the disk structure…