The Dynamical Structure of Nonradiative Black Hole Accretion Flows

By J. Hawley, Steven Balbus. 2002

231 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We analyze three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic simulations of a nonradiative accretion flow around a black hole using a pseudo-Newtonian potential. The flow originates from a torus initially centered at 100 gravitational (Schwarzschild) radii. Accretion is driven by turbulent stresses generated self-consistently by the magnetorotational instability. The resulting flow has three well-defined dynamical components: a hot, thick, rotationally dominated Keplerian disk; a surrounding magnetized corona with vigorous circulation and outflow; and a magnetically confined jet along the centrifugal funnel wall. Inside 10 gravitational radii, the disk becomes very hot, more toroidal, and highly intermittent. These results contrast sharply with quasi-spherical, self-similar viscous models. There are no significant dynamical differences between simulations that include resistive heating and those that do not. We conclude by deducing some simple radiative properties of our solutions, and apply the results to the accretion-powered Galactic center source Sgr A*.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d5538d61631e160507bc7c7bd322d43b0ce86353

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Citations in the corpus

Enhanced Angular Momentum Transport in Accretion Disks (2003, methodology): “The more general problem of nonradiative global accretion over larger radial domains, first considered in two dimensions by Stone & Pringle (2001), has been extended to three dimensions by Hawley, Balbus & Stone (2001) and Hawley & Balbus (2002).”
A bright year for tidal disruptions (2015, background): “Global MHD simulations (e.g., Hawley & Balbus 2002) find that a large fraction of the disk mass is lost to disk outflows within a decade of radius of its outer disk, with a velocity close to the escape speed from this location.”
Nonthermal Electrons in Radiatively Inefficient Accretion Flow Models of Sagittarius A* (2003, background): “Since global MHD simulations of RIAFs find highly time-dependent dissipation of mag- netic energy (e.g., Hawley & Balbus 2002; Machida & Matsumoto 2003; Igumenshchev et al. 2003), it is natural to suppose that solar flare-like acceleration events happen in the accretion flow close to the BH.”
Accretion of Low Angular Momentum Material onto Black Holes: Two-dimensional Magnetohydrodynamic Case (2003, background): “As in the MHD models of SP01, the profiles of each variable are not simple power laws but are rather complex.”
X-Ray Properties of Black-Hole Binaries (2006, background): “…scientists have speculated that these jets are powered by BH spin via something like the Penrose (1969) process, which allows energy to be milked from a spinning BH. Detailed models generally invoke magnetic fields (Blandford & Znajek 1977; Hawley & Balbus 2002; Meier 2003; McKinney & Gammie 2004).”
Three-dimensional general relativistic radiation magnetohydrodynamical simulation of super-Eddington accretion, using a new code HARMRAD with M1 closure (2013, unknown): “…of various disk thicknesses, such as |H/R| ∼ 0.1–0.15 (Hawley & Krolik 2001; De Villiers et al. 2003; Beckwith et al. 2008b,a, 2009) and |H/R| ∼ 0.2 (Hawley & Balbus 2002; Machida et al. 2000; Martı́ & Müller 2003; McKinney & Gammie 2004; Fragile et al. 2007; McKinney & Blandford 2009) and…”
A Fundamental plane of black hole activity (2003, background): “…point of view (Narayan, Igumenschev, & Abramowicz 2000) and from numerical simulations (Igumenschev & Abramowicz 2000; c© 0000 RAS, MNRAS000, 000–000 Hawley & Balbus 2002), it has been shown that that radiatively inefficient flows are prone to strong convective instabilities and/or powerful…”
NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF HOT ACCRETION FLOWS. II. NATURE, ORIGIN, AND PROPERTIES OF OUTFLOWS AND THEIR POSSIBLE OBSERVATIONAL APPLICATIONS (2012, background): “But different from Hawley & Krolik (2002), both Hawley & Balbus (2002) and Kato, Mineshige & Shibata (2004) found unbound jet in their simulations.”
The Magnetorotational Instability in Core-Collapse Supernova Explosions (2002, background): “A first example of driving a polar flow with the MRI is given by Hawley & Balbus (2002).”
Hot Accretion Flows Around Black Holes (2014, methodology): “Many studies have been published over the years, providing estimates of the jet power as a function of black hole spin (e.g., Hawley & Balbus 2002; De Villers et al. 2005; McKinney 2005, 2006; Hawley & Krolik 2006).”
Short-hard gamma-ray bursts (2007, unknown): “…onto BH, with rapid progress from simulations that use newtonian and pseudo-Newtonian potentials (e.g., Hawley, 2000; Hawley & Krolik, 2002; Hawley & Balbus, 2002; Armitage, Reynolds & Chiang, 2001; Armitage & Reynolds, 2003; Proga, 2003; Proga & Begelman, 2003; Machida & Matsumoto, 2003;…”
Three-dimensional GRMHD Simulations of Neutrino-cooled Accretion Disks from Neutron Star Mergers (2017, result): “However, in detail, the nature of the hydrodynamical turbulence (convection versus the MRI-driven turbulence) is fundamentally different from that of the MHD case (Balbus & Hawley 2002; Hawley & Balbus 2002).”
The Spin of the Near-Extreme Kerr Black Hole GRS 1915+105 (2006, background): “For many years, scientists have speculated that these jets are powered by BH spin via a Penrose-like process associated with magnetic fields (e.g., Blandford & Znajek 1977; Hawley & Balbus 2002; Meier 2003; McKinney & Gammie 2004).”
An Accretion-Jet Model for Black Hole Binaries: Interpreting the Spectral and Timing Features of XTE J1118+480 (2004, background): “First, both numerical simulations (Stone, Pringle, & Begelman 1999; Hawley & Balbus 2002; Igumenshchev et al. 2003) and analytical work (Narayan & Yi 1994, 1995a; Blandford & Begelman 1999; Narayan et al. 2000; Quataert & Gruzinov 2000) indicate that probably only a fraction of the gas that is…”
NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF HOT ACCRETION FLOWS. III. REVISITING WIND PROPERTIES USING THE TRAJECTORY APPROACH (2015, result): “Moreover, MHD simulations yield very similar results that typically s ∼ 0.5 − 1 (e.g., Stone & Pringle 2001; Hawley & Balbus 2002; Igumenshchev et al. 2003; Pen et al. 2003; see review in Yuan, Wu & Bu 2012).”
Energy, momentum and mass outflows and feedback from thick accretion discs around rotating black holes (2013, unknown): “Pseudo-Newtonian magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD) simulations have been then performed by a number of authors (Machida, Hayashi & Matsumoto 2000; Machida, Matsumoto & Mineshige 2001; Stone & Pringle 2001; Hawley & Balbus 2002; Igumenshchev, Narayan & Abramowicz 2003).”
GRMHD simulations of magnetized advection‐dominated accretion on a non‐spinning black hole: role of outflows (2012, background): “Similarly, Hawley & Balbus (2002) observed outflows for all radii outside the innermost stable circular orbit (ISCO), though they used a definition of inflow and outflow based on cyclindrical coordinates (all other authors use spherical coordinates) which makes their outflow estimates somewhat…”
Three-dimensional Magnetohydrodynamic Simulations of Radiatively Inefficient Accretion Flows (2003, background): “Since the Stone & Pringle simulation is in two-dimensions, it cannot show the kind of nonaxisymmetric accretion via streams that we see in model B. 5.”