Global General Relativistic Magnetohydrodynamic Simulation of a Tilted Black Hole Accretion Disk

By P. Chris Fragile, O. Blaes, Peter Anninos, J. Salmonson. 2007

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This paper presents a continuation of our efforts to numerically study accretion disks that are misaligned (tilted) with respect to the rotation axis of a Kerr black hole. Here we present results of a global numerical simulation which fully incorporates the effects of the black hole spacetime as well as magnetorotational turbulence that is the primary source of angular momentum transport in the flow. This simulation shows dramatic differences from comparable simulations of untilted disks. Accretion onto the hole occurs predominantly through two opposing plunging streams that start from high latitudes with respect to both the black hole and disk midplanes. This is due to the aspherical nature of the gravitational spacetime around the rotating black hole. These plunging streams start from a larger radius than would be expected for an untilted disk. In this regard, the tilted black hole effectively acts like an untilted black hole of lesser spin. Throughout the duration of the simulation, the main body of the disk remains tilted with respect to the symmetry plane of the black hole; thus, there is no indication of a Bardeen-Petterson effect in the disk at large. The torque of the black hole instead principally causes a global precession of the main disk body. In this simulation, the precession has a frequency of 3(M☉/M) Hz, a value consistent with many observed low-frequency quasi-periodic oscillations. However, this value is strongly dependent on the size of the disk, so this frequency can be expected to vary over a large range.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e842cdcfa9ff7cd3c0ab7a331da69cdcf0f8e9ea

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Citations in the corpus

Low-frequency oscillations in black holes: a spectral-timing approach to the case of GX 339-4 (2011, methodology): “In the framework set by the global LenseThirring precession of the hot flow model (Fragile et al. 2007; Ingram et al. 2009; Ingram & Done 2011) the QPO could be triggered by turbulence, resulting in a vertical kick applied bythe bending waves propagating in the outer accretion flow to the…”
TESTING THE NO-HAIR THEOREM WITH EVENT HORIZON TELESCOPE OBSERVATIONS OF SAGITTARIUS A* (2013, background): “These were previously ignored due to the dramatic dynamical consequences associated with the interplay between the Lense-Thirring torques and the orbital motion (Fragile et al. 2007), leading to concerns that stationry models of retrograde accretion flows were intrinsically inco - sistent.”
The Masses and Spins of Neutron Stars and Stellar-Mass Black Holes (2014, background): “Interestingly, it has been suggested that amisaligned inner disk could, at high accretion rates, rotate like a solid body and thereby produce the few-Hz quasi-periodic brightness oscillations seen in several accreting stellar-mass black holes [228,83,229,230].”
Simulations of magnetized discs around black holes: Effects of black hole spin, disc thickness and magnetic field geometry (2010, background): “A tilt between the angular momentum vector of the disc and the BH rotation axis might significantly affect the accretion flow (Fragile et al. 2007).”
Three-dimensional general relativistic radiation magnetohydrodynamical simulation of super-Eddington accretion, using a new code HARMRAD with M1 closure (2013, unknown): “…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 |H/R| ∼ 0.3–0.4 (Igumenshchev et al. 2003; Penna et al. 2010), as well as radiatively…”
A systematic search for close supermassive black hole binaries in the Catalina Real-time Transient Survey (2015, background): “Simulations suggest that the Bardeen-Peterson effect may not typically occur in AGN disks (Fragile et al. 2007).”
Formation of precessing jets by tilted black hole discs in 3D general relativistic MHD simulations (2017, methodology): “In the simplest case, model W-U, the disc precesses at a constant rate, dP/dt = constant, as expected for a misaligned disc angular momentum vector under the action of a constant LT torque (see Fragile et al. 2007).”
PHOTON RINGS AROUND KERR AND KERR-LIKE BLACK HOLES (2013, methodology): “Mościbrodzka et al. (2009) and Dexter et al. (2009, 2010) fitted the VLBI and spectral data to sets of images obtained from three-dimensional general-relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (3D-GRMHD) simulations (Gammie et al. 2003; Fragile et al. 2007, 2009; McKinney & Blandford 2009).”
Hot Accretion Flows Around Black Holes (2014, background): “Fragile and collaborators have carried out a number of numerical simulations of tilted hot accretion flows (Fragile et al. 2007, 2009; Fragile 2009; Dexter & Fragile 2011, 2013).”
A review of quasi-periodic oscillations from black hole X-ray binaries: Observation and theory (2019, background): “Using the weak field formula for ΩLT (equation 8) and specifying Σ(r) ∝ r−ζ then gives [124, 55, 90]”
General relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations of magnetically choked accretion flows around black holes (2012, background): “The initial mass for the thick disk models is an isentropic hydro-equilibrium torus (Fishbone & Moncrief 1976; Gammie et al. 2003) with inner edge at rin = 10rg and pressure maximum at rmax = 100rg.”
A quasi-periodic modulation of the iron line centroid energy in the black hole binary H1743−322 (2016, background): “…precession of the entire inner flow, the precession period depends on the inner and outer radii of the inner flow, the radial surface density profile of the inner flow (Fragile et al. 2007; Ingram et al. 2009), as well as the mass and dimensionless spin parameter, a = cJ/GM2, of the black hole.”
Stability of relativistic jets from rotating, accreting black holes via fully three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic simulations (2008, methodology): “As Fragile et al. (2007), we use transmissive (not reflecting) polar boundaryconditions.”
The size of the jet launching region in M87 (2011, background): “…of the initial torus provides an independent scale and fixes 3 Dexter, Agol & Fragile (2009) found a radiative efficiency from energy lost to numerical reconnection of ǫ ≃ 0.1 for Sgr A* in a non-conservative simulation from Fragile et al. (2007). c© 2011 RAS, MNRAS 000, 1–13 the accretion rate.”
First Sagittarius A* Event Horizon Telescope Results. V. Testing Astrophysical Models of the Galactic Center Black Hole (2022, background): “In tilted disks, accretion occurs via thin plunging streams (e.g., Fragile et al. 2007), where electrons in the shocked flow can be heated to relativistic temperatures (e.g., Dexter & Fragile 2013; Generozov et al. 2014; White et al. 2019), forming localized, fluctuating hot spots more easily than…”