Numerical Treatment of Anisotropic Radiation Field Coupling with the Relativistic Resistive Magnetofluids

We develop a numerical scheme for solving a fully special relativistic resistive radiation magnetohydrodynamics. Our code guarantees conservations of total mass, momentum and energy. Radiation energy density and radiation flux are consistently updated using the M-1 closure method, which can resolve an anisotropic radiation fields in contrast to the Eddington approximation as well as the flux-limited diffusion approximation. For the resistive part, we adopt a simple form of the Ohm's law. The advection terms are explicitly solved with an approximate Riemann solver, mainly HLL scheme, and HLLC and HLLD schemes for some tests. The source terms, which describe the gas-radiation interaction and the magnetic energy dissipation, are implicitly integrated, relaxing the Courant-Friedrichs-Lewy condition even in optically thick regime or a large magnetic Reynolds number regime. Although we need to invert $4\times 4$ (for gas-radiation interaction) and $3\times 3$ (for magnetic energy dissipation) matrices at each grid point for implicit integration, they are obtained analytically without preventing massive parallel computing. We show that our code gives reasonable outcomes in numerical tests for ideal magnetohydrodynamics, propagating radiation, and radiation hydrodynamics. We also applied our resistive code to the relativistic Petschek type magnetic reconnection, revealing the reduction of the reconnection rate via the radiation drag.Comment: 16 pages, 1 table, 13 Figures, accepted for publication in Ap

Eclipsing light curves for accretion flows around a rotating black hole and atmospheric effects of the companion star

We calculate eclipsing light curves for accretion flows around a rotating black hole taking into account the atmospheric effects of the companion star. In the cases of no atmospheric effects, the light curves contain the information of the black hole spin because most of the X-ray photons around 1 keV usually come from the blueshifted part of the accretion flow near the black hole shadow, and the size and the position of the black hole shadow depend on the spin. In these cases, when most of the emission comes from the vicinity of the event horizon, the light curves become asymmetric at ingress and egress. We next investigate the atmospheric absorption and scattering effects of the companion stars. By using the solar-type atmospheric model, we have taken into account the atmospheric effects of the companion star, such as the photoionization by HI and HeI. We found that the eclipsing light curves observed at 1 keV possibly contain the information of the black hole spin. However, in our atmospheric model, the effects of the atmosphere are much larger than the effects of the black hole spin. Therefore, even in the case that the light curves contain the information of the black hole spin, it may be difficult to extract the information of the black hole spin if we do not have the realistic atmospheric profiles, such as the temperature, and the number densities for several elements. Even in such cases, the light-curve asymmetries due to the rotation of the accretion disc exist. Only when we have the reliable atmospheric model, in principle, the information of the strong-gravity regions, such as the black hole spin, can be obtained from the eclipsing light curves.Comment: Takahashi R., Watarai K., 2007, MNRAS, 374, 151

Eclipsing Light-Curve Asymmetry for Black-Hole Accretion Flows

We propose an eclipsing light-curve diagnosis for black-hole accretion flows. When emission from an inner accretion disk around a black hole is occulted by a companion star, the observed light curve becomes asymmetric at ingress and egress on a time scale of 0.1-1 seconds. This light-curve analysis provides a means of verifying the relativistic properties of the accretion flow, based on the special/general relativistic effects of black holes. The ``skewness'' for the eclipsing light curve of a thin disk is $\sim 0.08$, whereas that of a slim disk is $\sim 0$, since the innermost part is self-occulted by the disk's outer rim.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, PASJ accepte