Three-dimensional general relativistic radiation magnetohydrodynamical simulation of super-Eddington accretion, using a new code HARMRAD with M1 closure

By J. McKinney, A. Tchekhovskoy, A. Sa̧dowski, R. N. U. O. Maryland, L. B. Laboratory, Harvard. 2013

261 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Black hole (BH) accretion flows and jets are dynamic hot relativistic magnetized plasma flows whose radiative opacity can significantly affect flow structure and behavior. We describe a numerical scheme, tests, and an astrophysically relevant application using the M1 radiation closure within a new three-dimensional (3D) general relativistic (GR) radiation (R) magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) massively parallel code called HARMRAD. Our 3D GRRMHD simulation of super-Eddington accretion (about $20$ times Eddington) onto a rapidly rotating BH (dimensionless spin $j=0.9375$) shows sustained non-axisymmemtric disk turbulence, a persistent electromagnetic jet driven by the Blandford-Znajek effect, and a total radiative output consistently near the Eddington rate. The total accretion efficiency is of order $20\%$, the large-scale electromagnetic jet efficiency is of order $10\%$, and the total radiative efficiency that reaches large distances remains low at only order $1\%$. However, the radiation jet and the electromagnetic jet both emerge from a geometrically beamed polar region, with super-Eddington isotropic equivalent luminosities. Such simulations with HARMRAD can enlighten the role of BH spin vs.\ disks in launching jets, help determine the origin of spectral and temporal states in x-ray binaries, help understand how tidal disruption events (TDEs) work, provide an accurate horizon-scale flow structure for M87 and other active galactic nuclei (AGN), and isolate whether AGN feedback is driven by radiation or by an electromagnetic, thermal, or kinetic wind/jet. For example, the low radiative efficiency and weak BH spin-down rate from our simulation suggest that BH growth over cosmological times to billions of solar masses by redshifts of $z\sim 6-8$ is achievable even with rapidly rotating BHs and ten solar mass BH seeds.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0e01b62893261dc0197ea90797194ec9b8c31a8b

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Citations in the corpus

Cool outflows in galaxies and their implications (2020, unknown): “10−3 (e.g., Sadowski et al. 2013, 2014; Sadowski and Narayan 2015; Jiang et al. 2014; McKinney et al. 2014, 2015).”
Super-Eddington Accretion Disks around Supermassive Black Holes (2017, methodology): “…rates are ∼ 25 − 50ṀEdd, these simulations do confirm that the radiative efficiency can reach ∼ 4%− 6% as in Jiang et al. (2014a), although it is still unclear why it is different from the results found by others (McKinney et al. 2014; Sa̧dowski et al. 2014) in the similar accretion rate range.”
A Unified Model for Tidal Disruption Events (2018, methodology): “Recently the development of novel radiation magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) codes, some of which also performed under full general relativity (GR), have helped us understand more about such accretion flow (e.g., Ohsuga et al. 2005; Jiang et al. 2014; McKinney et al. 2014; Sa̧dowski et al. 2015).”
Three-dimensional simulations of supercritical black hole accretion discs - luminosities, photon trapping and variability (2015, methodology): “This was later followed by codes using more advanced radiative transport schemes, either still in the Newtonian or special-relativistic approximation (Jiang et al. 2012, 2014a; Ohsuga & Takahashi 2015), or in general relativity (Sądowski et al. 2013; McKinney et al. 2014; Fragile et al. 2014).”
A GLOBAL THREE-DIMENSIONAL RADIATION MAGNETO-HYDRODYNAMIC SIMULATION OF SUPER-EDDINGTON ACCRETION DISKS (2014, background): “It is notable, however, that the radiative efficiency reported by a recent 3D GR radiation MHD simulation using M1 closure for a rapid spinning black hole with a similar accretion rate (McKinney et al. 2014) is also much smaller than what we find here.”
Rapid and Bright Stellar-mass Binary Black Hole Mergers in Active Galactic Nuclei (2016, background): “…10–100 M black holes can produce a fast, bright (super-Eddington) electromagnetic transients through the disk’s thermal emission Jiang et al. (2014); McKinney et al. (2014); Murase et al. (2016), and possibly through driving relativistic outflows (Remillard & McClintock 2006; Bosch-Ramon et al.…”
First results from the TNG50 simulation: galactic outflows driven by supernovae and black hole feedback (2019, background): “General relativistic (GR)MHD simulations explore black hole outflow phenomena including both winds and jets (Blandford & Begelman 1999; McKinney et al. 2014), recently reviewed in Yuan & Narayan (2014).”
Hyper-Eddington accretion flows on to massive black holes (2015, background): “…break the hyper-Eddington accretion solution (e.g. Begelman 2002; Ohsuga et al. 2005, 2009; Dotan & Shaviv 2011; Li, Ostriker & Sunyaev 2013; Jiang, Stone & Davis 2014; McKinney et al. 2014; Sa̧dowski et al. 2015; Takahashi & Ohsuga 2015; McKinney, Dai & Avara 2015; King & Muldrew 2016).”
First M87 Event Horizon Telescope Results. V. Physical Origin of the Asymmetric Ring (2019, unknown): “Saḑowski et al. (2013b; see also Saḑowski et al. 2014, 2017; McKinney et al. 2014) applied the M1 closure (Levermore 1984), which treats the radiation as a relativistic fluid.”
The Event Horizon General Relativistic Magnetohydrodynamic Code Comparison Project (2019, background): “Another area where code comparison will prove useful is in the domain of nonideal GRMHD modeling, e.g., radiative MHD (e.g., Fragile et al. 2012; McKinney et al. 2014; Saḑowski et al. 2014; Ryan et al. 2015; Takahashi et al. 2016) and resistive MHD (e.g., Bugli et al. 2014; Qian et al. 2017;…”