Aligning spinning black holes and accretion discs

By A. King, S. Lubow, Gordon I. Ogilvie, J. Pringle. 2005

224 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We consider the alignment torque between a spinning black hole and an accretion disc whose angular momenta are misaligned. This situation must hold initially in almost all gas accretion events on to supermassive black holes, and may occur in binaries where the black hole receives a natal supernova kick. We show that the torque always acts to align the hole’s spin with the total angular momentum without changing its magnitude. The torque acts dissipatively on the disc, reducing its angular momentum, and aligning it with the hole if and only if the angle θ between the angular momenta J d of the disc and J h of the hole satisfy the inequality cos θ> −J d/2J h .I fthis condition fails, which requires both θ> π/2 and J d < 2J h, the disc counteraligns. Ke yw ords: accretion, accretion discs ‐ black hole physics.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/10ebad7537c32eb4914f4f93ba094b6d60f129e5

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Citations in the corpus

Radio Loudness of Active Galactic Nuclei: Observational Facts and Theoretical Implications (2006, background): “However, as was demonstrated by King et al. (2005) and confirmed by Lodato & Pringle (2006), counterrotating disks can in fact be formed, provided that individual accretion events involve a much smaller amount of material than the mass of the black hole.”
Grand unification of AGN activity in the ΛCDM cosmology (2009, methodology): “The much smaller angular momentum associated with each accretion episode means that, in general,Jd < 2Jbh, so in the chaotic accretion model counteralignment occurs in a fraction (King et al. 2005) f = 1 2 ( 1− Jd 2Jbh ) ≃ 1/2 (22) of the accretion episodes.”
Formation and Evolution of Compact-object Binaries in AGN Disks (2019, background): “…the angular momentum direction of a circumbinary disk (e.g., Scheuer & Feiler 1996; Natarajan & Pringle 1998; Ogilvie 1999; Hughes & Blandford 2003; King et al. 2005; Bogdanovic et al. 2007; Volonteri et al. 2007; Lodato & Gerosa 2013), and the angular momentum direction of a circumbinary disk is…”
Hierarchical analysis of gravitational-wave measurements of binary black hole spin–orbit misalignments (2017, background): “…which can act to align the spin of stars, such as realignment during a stable mass accretion phase (Bardeen & Petterson 1975; Kalogera 2000; King et al. 2005), accretion onto a BH passing through a common-envelope (CE) event (Ivanova et al. 2013), and realignment through tidal interactions…”
On the diffusive propagation of warps in thin accretion discs (2010, background): “…arising from the generalr l - tivistic Lense-Thirring precession around a spinning black hole (Bardeen & Petterson 1975; Scheuer & Feiler 1996; King et al. 2005; Lodato & Pringle 2006; Martin et al. 2007; Perego et al. 2009), and self-induced warping caused by radiation pressu (Pringle 1996).”
Doing Science with eLISA: Astrophysics and Cosmology in the Millihertz Regime (2012, background): “o et al., 2009, Scheuer and Feiler, 1996) evolving into a 30 of 81 eLISA: Astrophysics and cosmology in the millihertz regime conﬁguration of minimum energy where the black hole and disc are aligned (King et al., 2005). This process is short (105 yrs) compared to the typical accretion time scale, al”
Alignment of the Spins of Supermassive Black Holes Prior to Coalescence (2007, background): “…to more than 105 gravitational radii, hence alignment of the black hole spin axes is efficient (and not antialignment, since the cumulative angular momentum of the accretion disk is much greater than the angular momentum of the black holes; see King et al. 2005; Lodato & Pringle 2006).”
Tearing up the disc: misaligned accretion on to a binary (2013, methodology): “For a misaligned disc (with negligible angular momentum w.r.t. the hole spin) around a spinning black hole, there is symmetry about the spin plane, so that discs with an inclination θ or π − θ produce similar evolution (see e.g. King et al. 2005 for a discussion).”
Broad emission lines for a negatively spinning black hole (2010, background): “As shown by King et al. (2005), both parallel and antiparallel alignments of the disc and black hole angular momenta are stable configurations; misaligned discs will evolve to one of them.”
The evolution of massive black holes and their spins in their galactic hosts (2012, background): “(This is a simplified version of the prescription derived by King et al. (2005).)”
The nature of SS433 and the ultraluminous X-ray sources (2006, background): “If the hole has non-zero spin, then the disc near the black hole must be aligned with its spin axis out to a warp radius of a few tens of Schwarzschild radii R s = 3 × 106 cm (cf. King et al. 2005).”
Formation of precessing jets by tilted black hole discs in 3D general relativistic MHD simulations (2017, background): “When precessed material mixes due to viscous dissipation (see e.g. King et al. 2005; Sorathia, Krolik & Hawley 2013), the net result is alignment with the BH spin.”
Cosmological Black Hole Spin Evolution by Mergers and Accretion (2008, background): “The picture of spin evolution via prolonged accretion was questioned by King et al. (2005).”
The Masses and Spins of Neutron Stars and Stellar-Mass Black Holes (2014, unknown): “When there is dissipation, this will lead to a gradual settling of the matter’s motion into the spin plane of the hole (the orbits could be prograde or retrograde, depending on the conditions; see [70]), a process called the Bardeen–Petterson effect [71].”
Black Hole Spin and Galactic Morphology (2007, background): “King et al. (2005) suggested, however, that when the initial misalignment angle is large and m is sufficiently small, counter-alignment, rather than alignment, occurs and BHs can be spun down in a large fraction of the accretion episodes.”