Dynamical Evolution of Neutrino-cooled Accretion Disks: Detailed Microphysics, Lepton-driven Convection, and Global Energetics

By William H. Lee, E. Ramirez-Ruiz, D. Page. 2005

165 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present a detailed, two-dimensional numerical study of the microphysical conditions and dynamical evolution of accretion disks around black holes when neutrino emission is the main source of cooling. Such structures are likely to form after the gravitational collapse of massive rotating stellar cores or the coalescence of two compact objects in a binary (e.g., the Hulse-Taylor system). The physical composition is determined self-consistently by considering two regimes, neutrino opaque and neutrino transparent, with a detailed equation of state that takes into account neutronization, nuclear statistical equilibrium of a gas of free nucleons and α-particles, blackbody radiation, and a relativistic Fermi gas of arbitrary degeneracy. Various neutrino emission processes are considered, with e± capture onto free nucleons providing the dominant contribution to the cooling rate. We find that important temporal and spatial scales, related to the optically thin/optically thick transition, are present in the disk and manifest themselves clearly in the energy output in neutrinos. This transition produces an inversion of the lepton gradient in the innermost regions of the flow that drives convective motions and affects the density and disk scale height radial profiles. The electron fraction remains low in the region close to the black hole and, if preserved in an outflow, could give rise to heavy-element nucleosynthesis. Our specific initial conditions arise from the binary merger context, and so we explore the implications of our results for the production of gamma-ray bursts.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/cd7ee8bdf77d1048b8b3d1f0bd067d31f8c0c3cf

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. B. Metzger
2. Bing Zhang
3. E. Berger
4. D. Kasen
5. E. Quataert
6. R. Fern'andez
7. Stephan Rosswog
8. E. Ramirez-Ruiz

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. B. Metzger
2. Bing Zhang
3. R. Fern'andez
4. E. Quataert
5. D. Kasen
6. A. Bauswein
7. Stephan Rosswog
8. A. Piro

Citations in the corpus

• Comprehensive nucleosynthesis analysis for ejecta of compact binary mergers (2014, methodology): “This prescription was employed, for instance, by Igumenshchev et al. (1996), Lee et al. (2005), and Setiawan et al. (2006).”
• Neutrino-dominated accretion flows as the central engine of gamma-ray bursts (2017, background): “…NDAFs are most widely studied (see e.g, Popham et al. 1999; Narayan et al. 2001; Di Matteo et al. 2002; Kohri & Mineshige 2002; Kohri et al. 2005; Lee et al. 2005; Gu et al. 2006; Chen & Beloborodov 2007; Liu et al. 2007; Janiuk et al. 2007; Rossi et al. 2008; Janiuk & Yuan 2010; Kawanaka &…”
• Gamma-Ray Bursts in the Swift Era (2009, background): “…seems to be broadly consistent with the data, probably suggesting a roughly universal efficiency for converting kinetic energy into γ−rays in the prompt emission for both long and short GRBs (Lee et al. 2005a, Nousek et al. 2006, Bloom et al. 2007, Kaneko et al. 2007, Nysewander et al. 2008).”
• Mergers of Neutron Star-Black Hole Binaries with Small Mass Ratios: Nucleosynthesis, Gamma-Ray Bursts, and Electromagnetic Transients (2005, background): “Lee and Ramirez-Ruiz (2002) have analyzed the flow pattern within an accretion disk around a BH and, in recent papers (Lee and Ramirez-Ruiz 2004, Lee et al. 2005), they included detailed microphysics in their simulations.”
• Time-dependent models of accretion discs formed from compact object mergers (2008, methodology): “More recently, these disks have been modeled with time-dependent calculations in 1D (Janiuk et al. 2004), 2D (Lee et al. 2004, 2005b), and 3D (Setiawan et al. 2004, 2006).”
• Astrophysical smooth particle hydrodynamics (2009, methodology): “To model compact object mergers, neutrinos have been implemented into SPH via a hybrid, particle-mesh approach [100] and by using local disk scale heights to estimate neutrino opacities [33,34].”
• Flares in Long and Short Gamma-Ray Bursts: A Common Origin in a Hyperaccreting Accretion Disk (2005, background): “Producing a sufficiently massive disk at large radii as a consequence of a merger of compact objects is likely to be harder, since at least initially the relatively low specific angular momentum implies thatQT,min ∼ 10 (Lee et al. 2005).”
• Delayed outflows from black hole accretion tori following neutron star binary coalescence (2013, methodology): “Lee et al. (2005) evolved tori over timescales up to a few 100 ms, using initial conditions from a merger simulation.”
• Long-term GRMHD simulations of neutron star merger accretion discs: implications for electromagnetic counterparts (2018, methodology): “This fit has been used in a number of NS merger remnant disk studies to parameterize the effects of nuclear recombination (e.g., Popham et al. 1999; Di Matteo et al. 2002; Lee et al. 2005; Shibata et al. 2007).”
• GRB 080503: IMPLICATIONS OF A NAKED SHORT GAMMA-RAY BURST DOMINATED BY EXTENDED EMISSION (2008, background): “%) of the accretion disk that initially forms from the merger will also be ejected in powerful winds (Lee et al. 2005b) from the disk at late times; this material is also neutron rich and will produce radioactive isotopes (Metzger et al. 2008c).”