Rapid AGN accretion from counter-rotating discs

Abstract

Accretion in the nuclei of active galaxies may occur chaotically. This can produce accretion discs which are counter-rotating or strongly misaligned with respect to the spin of the central supermassive black hole (SMBH), or the axis of a close SMBH binary. Accordingly we consider the cancellation of angular momentum in accretion discs with a significant change of plane (tilt) between inner and outer parts. We estimate analytically the maximum accretion rate through such discs and compare this with the results of Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations. These suggest that accretion rates on to supermassive black holes may be larger by factors $\gtrsim 100$ if the disc is internally tilted in this way rather than planar. This offers a natural way of driving the rapid growth of supermassive black holes, and the coalescence of SMBH binaries.

6 pages, 8 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS. Movies of the simulations are available at http://www.astro.le.ac.uk/users/cjn12/tilt.shtml

References in corpus (7)

• SPLASH: An interactive visualisation tool for Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics simulations
• The Evolution of Black Hole Mass and Spin in Active Galactic Nuclei
• Fuelling Active Galactic Nuclei
• Retrograde Accretion and Merging Supermassive Black Holes
• The evolution of misaligned accretion discs and spinning black holes
• Broken discs: warp propagation in accretion discs
• The final parsec problem: aligning a binary with an external accretion disc

Cited by in corpus (43)

• Phantom: A smoothed particle hydrodynamics and magnetohydrodynamics code for astrophysics
• Tearing up the disc: misaligned accretion on to a binary
• On the Bardeen-Petterson Effect in black hole accretion discs
• Tearing up the disc: how black holes accrete
• Realistic neutron star constraints on bosonic asymmetric dark matter
• Signatures of broken protoplanetary discs in scattered light and in sub-millimetre observations
• AGN jet feedback on a moving mesh: cocoon inflation, gas flows and turbulence
• Disc Tearing and Bardeen-Petterson Alignment in GRMHD Simulations of Highly Tilted Thin Accretion Discs
• Counter-Rotation and High Velocity Outflow in the Parsec-Scale Molecular Torus of NGC 1068
• Disc tearing: implications for black hole accretion and AGN variability
• Variability in tidal disruption events: gravitationally unstable streams
• Which AGN Jets Quench Star Formation in Massive Galaxies?
• Stable counteralignment of a circumbinary disc
• Local and global dynamics of warped astrophysical discs
• Post-periapsis pancakes: sustenance for self-gravity in tidal disruption events
• Numerical simulations of the possible origin of the two sub-parsec scale and counter-rotating stellar disks around SgrA*
• Misaligned streamers around a galactic centre black hole from a single cloud's infall
• A physical model for state transitions in black hole X-ray binaries
• Resonances in retrograde circumbinary discs
• Disc tearing: numerical investigation of warped disc instability
• Disentangling the Circumnuclear Environs of Centaurus A: III. An Inner Molecular Ring, Nuclear Shocks and the CO to warm H2 interface
• Do jets precess... or even move at all?
• Radiation Transport Two-Temperature GRMHD Simulations of Warped Accretion Disks
• Polar planets around highly eccentric binaries are the most stable
• Disk Tearing Leads to Low and High Frequency Quasi Periodic Oscillations in a GRMHD Simulation of a Thin Accretion Disk
• Ringed accretion disks: instabilities
• Counter-Rotating Accretion Discs
• Ringed accretion disks: evolution of double toroidal configurations
• Using Megamaser Disks to Probe Black Hole Accretion
• Apsidal precession, disc breaking and viscosity in warped discs
• Sustained Kozai-Lidov oscillations in misaligned circumstellar gas disks
• Spectro-temporal studies of rapid transition of the quasi periodic oscillations in the black hole source H1743-322
• Possible Evolution of Supermassive Black Holes from FRI quasars
• Kelvin-Helmholtz Instability of Counter-Rotating Discs
• Modeling quasar accretion disc temperature profiles
• Alignments Of Black Holes With Their Warped Accretion Disks And Episodic Lifetimes Of Active Galactic Nuclei
• Dragged surfaces. On the accretion tori in the ergoregion
• Limiting effects in clusters of misaligned toroids orbiting static SMBHs
• SMBH accretion & mergers: removing the symmetries
• Embedded BHs and multipole globules: Clustered misaligned thick accretion disks around static SMBHs
• Overlapping Inflow Events as Catalysts for Supermassive Black Hole Growth
• Kinematic properties of the dual AGN system J0038+4128 based on long-slit spectroscopy
• Lense-Thirring effect on accretion flow from counter-rotating tori