Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2008-09-10
Astrophys.J.691:16-31,2009
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Accepted by ApJ
Scientific paper
10.1088/0004-637X/691/1/16
When the accretion rate is more than a small fraction of Eddington, the inner regions of accretion disks around black holes are expected to be radiation-dominated. However, in the alpha-model, these regions are also expected to be thermally unstable. In this paper, we report two 3-d radiation MHD simulations of a vertically-stratified shearing box in which the ratio of radiation to gas pressure is ~ 10, and yet no thermal runaway occurs over a timespan ~ 40 cooling times. Where the time-averaged dissipation rate is greater than the critical dissipation rate that creates hydrostatic equilibrium by diffusive radiation flux, the time-averaged radiation flux is held to the critical value, with the excess dissipated energy transported by radiative advection. Although the stress and total pressure are well-correlated as predicted by the alpha-model, we show that stress fluctuations precede pressure fluctuations, contrary to the usual supposition that the pressure controls the saturation level of the magnetic energy. This fact explains the thermal stability. Using a simple toy-model, we show that independently-generated magnetic fluctuations can drive radiation pressure fluctuations, creating a correlation between the two while maintaining thermal stability.
Blaes Omer
Hirose Shigenobu
Krolik Julian H.
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