Ab initio simulations of accretion disks instability

Abstract

We show that accretion disks, both in the subcritical and supercritical accretion rate regime, may exhibit significant amplitude luminosity oscillations. The luminosity time behavior has been obtained by performing a set of time-dependent 2D SPH simulations of accretion disks with different values of alpha and accretion rate. In this study, to avoid any influence of the initial disk configuration, we produced the disks injecting matter from an outer edge far from the central object. The period of oscillations is 2 - 50 s respectively for the two cases, and the variation amplitude of the disc luminosity is 10^38 - 10^39 erg/s. An explanation of this luminosity behavior is proposed in terms of limit cycle instability: the disk oscillates between a radiation pressure dominated configuration (with a high luminosity value) and a gas pressure dominated one (with a low luminosity value). The origin of this instability is the difference between the heat produced by viscosity and the energy emitted as radiation from the disk surface (the well-known thermal instability mechanism). We support this hypothesis showing that the limit cycle behavior produces a sequence of collapsing and refilling states of the innermost disk region.

arXiv comment11 pages, 15 Postscript figures, uses natbib.sty, accepted for publication in MNRAS

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• Studies of Thermally Unstable Accretion Disks around Black Holes with Adaptive Pseudospectral Domain Decomposition Method. II. Limit-Cycle Behavior in accretion disks around Kerr black holes
• Very high energy gamma-ray emission from X-ray transients during major outbursts