Vertical Structure of Radiation-Pressure-Dominated Thin Disks: Link between Vertical Advection and Convective Stability

Abstract

In the classic picture of standard thin accretion disks, the viscous heating is balanced by the radiative cooling through the diffusion process, and the radiation-pressure-dominated inner disk suffers convective instability. However, recent simulations have shown that the vertical advection process owing to the magnetic buoyancy can make significant contribution to the energy transport. In addition, no convective instability has been found by comparing the simulation results with the local convective stability criterion. In this work, following the spirit of simulations, we revisit the vertical structure of radiation-pressure-dominated thin disks by including the vertical advection process. Our study indicates a link between the additional energy transport and the convectively stable property. Thus, the vertical advection not only has significant contribution to the energy transport, but also plays an important role to make the disk convectively stable. Our analyses may be helpful to understand the discrepancy between the classic theory and simulations on standard thin disks.

6 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

References in corpus (3)

• A Global Three Dimensional Radiation Magneto-hydrodynamic Simulation of Super-Eddington Accretion Disks
• Powerful radiative jets in super-critical accretion disks around non-spinning black holes
• Radiation Pressure-supported Accretion Disks: Vertical Structure, Energy Advection, and Convective Stability