Motivation and challenge to capture both large scale and local transport in next generation accretion theory

Abstract

Accretion disc theory is less developed than stellar evolution theory although a similarly mature phenomenological picture is ultimately desired. While the interplay of theory and numerical simulations has amplified community awareness of the role of magnetic fields in angular momentum transport, there remains a long term challenge to incorporate insight gained from simulations back into improving practical models for comparison with observations. Here we emphasize the need to incorporate the role of non-local transport more precisely. To show where large scale transport would fit into the theoretical framework and how it is currently missing, we review why the wonderfully practical approach of Shakura-Sunyaev (1973,SS73) is necessarily a mean field theory, and one which does not include large scale transport. Observations of coronae and jets combined with the interpretation of results even from shearing box simulations of the magnetorotational instability (MRI) suggest that a significant fraction of disc transport is indeed non-local. We show that the Maxwell stresses in saturation are dominated by large scale contributions and the physics of MRI transport is not fully captured by a viscosity. We also clarify the standard physical interpretation of the MRi as it applies to shearing boxes. Computational limitations have so far focused most attention toward local simulations but the next generation of global simulations should help to inform improved mean field theories. Mean field accretion theory and mean field dynamo theory should in fact be unified into a single theory that predicts the time evolution of spectra and luminosity from separate disc, corona, and outflow contributions. Finally, we note that any mean field theory has a finite predictive precision that needs to be quantified when comparing the predictions to observations.

31 Pages, 4 figures, published in Journal of Plasma Physics (for Special Issue commemorating Ya. B. Zeldovich); this version updated to correct mathematical typos in the first paragraph of section 4.4.1, identified in a post-publication corrigendum

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Cited by in corpus (14)

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