Relativistic Accretion Mediated by Turbulent Comptonization

Abstract

Black hole and neutron star accretion flows display unusually high levels of hard coronal emission in comparison to all other optically thick, gravitationally bound, turbulent astrophysical systems. Since these flows sit in deep relativistic gravitational potentials, their random bulk motions approach the speed of light, therefore allowing turbulent Comptonization to be an important effect. We show that the inevitable production of hard X-ray photons results from turbulent Comptonization in the limit where the turbulence is trans-sonic and the accretion power approaches the Eddington Limit. In this regime, the turbulent Compton y-parameter approaches unity and the turbulent Compton temperature is a significant fraction of the electron rest mass energy, in agreement with the observed phenomena.

5 pages submitted to ApJ

References in corpus (4)

• X-ray Properties of Black-Hole Binaries
• INTEGRAL observations of the cosmic X-ray background in the 5-100 keV range via occultation by the Earth
• Deceleration of a Relativistic, Photon-Rich Shell: End of Preacceleration, Damping of MHD Turbulence, and the Emission Mechanism of Gamma-Ray Bursts
• Turbulent Comptonization in Relativistic Accretion Disks

Cited by in corpus (5)

• X-ray Spectra from MHD Simulations of Accreting Black Holes
• General Overview of Black Hole Accretion Theory
• Bulk Comptonization by Turbulence in Accretion Disks
• Swift J1644+57: An Ultra-Luminous X-ray Event
• A simple framework for modelling the dependence of bulk Comptonization by turbulence on accretion disc parameters