General Overview of Black Hole Accretion Theory

Abstract

I provide a broad overview of the basic theoretical paradigms of black hole accretion flows. Models that make contact with observations continue to be mostly based on the four decade old alpha stress prescription of Shakura & Sunyaev (1973), and I discuss the properties of both radiatively efficient and inefficient models, including their local properties, their expected stability to secular perturbations, and how they might be tied together in global flow geometries. The alpha stress is a prescription for turbulence, for which the only existing plausible candidate is that which develops from the magnetorotational instability (MRI). I therefore also review what is currently known about the local properties of such turbulence, and the physical issues that have been elucidated and that remain uncertain that are relevant for the various alpha-based black hole accretion flow models.

To be published in Space Science Reviews and as hard cover in the Space Sciences Series of ISSI: The Physics of Accretion on to Black Holes (Springer Publisher)

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Cited by in corpus (41)

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• Self-similar accretion in thin disks around near-extremal black holes
• On the Role of Hot Feedback Mode in Active Galactic Nuclei Feedback in an Elliptical Galaxy
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• Evidence for the radiation-pressure dominated accretion disk in bursting pulsar GRO J1744-28 using timing analysis
• Searching for the most powerful thermonuclear X-ray bursts with the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory
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• A decades-long fast-rise-exponential-decay flare in low-luminosity AGN NGC 7213
• Common origin for black holes in both high mass X-ray binaries and gravitational-wave sources
• The weakly nonlinear magnetorotational instability in a global, cylindrical Taylor-Couette flow
• Tilt Dependence of Alignment in Accretion Disks Subjected to Lense--Thirring Torques
• Two-dimensional Inflow-outflow Solution of Supercritical Accretion Flow
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• Neutrino oscillations in a neutrino-dominated accretion disk around a Kerr BH
• A multi-dimensional view of a unified model for TDEs
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• The influence of outflow in supercritical accretion flows
• Effect of generic dark matter halo on transonic accretion onto galactic black holes
• Effect of magnetic fields on the dynamics and gravitational wave emission of PPI-saturated self-gravitating accretion disks: simulations in full GR
• Black hole accretion of scalar clouds with spontaneous symmetry breaking
• Local stability and global instability in iron-opaque disks
• Warped Circumbinary Disks in Active Galactic Nuclei
• Exploiting the hidden symmetry of spinning black holes: conservation laws and numerical tests
• Quantum-Mechanical Suppression of Accretion by Primordial Black Holes
• Fast giant flares in discs around supermassive black holes
• On the dynamics of the torus around the kicked black hole