Models of Accretion Disks
Abstract
An accretion flow onto a supermassive black hole is the primary process powering quasars. However, a geometry of this flow is not well constrained. Both global MHD simulations and observations suggest that there are several emission components present in the nucleus: an accretion disk, hot plasma (corona or sphere) with electrons scattering the optical and UV photons, and an outflow (wind/jet). The relative location and size of these emission components, as well as their "interplay" affect the emerging quasar spectrum. I review briefly standard accretion disk models and the recent progress, point out discrepancies between the predicted and observed spectra and discuss some issues in fitting these models to the broad-band spectral energy distribution of quasars. I present examples of models fitted simultaneously to the optical-UV-X-ray data and possible constraints on the parameters.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1203.1342,
title = {Models of Accretion Disks},
author = {Aneta Siemiginowska},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1203.1342},
year = {2012}
}
Comments
Invited review presented at the conference on "The Multicolored Landscape of Compact Objects and Their Explosive Origins" held on June 11-24, 2006 in Cefalu, Italy