1 research outputs found
Hydrodynamics of the stream-disk impact in interacting binaries
We use hydrodynamic simulations to provide quantitative estimates of the
effects of the impact of the accretion stream on disks in interacting binaries.
For low accretion rates, efficient radiative cooling of the hotspot region can
occur, and the primary consequence of the stream impact is stream overflow
toward smaller disk radii. The stream is well described by a ballistic
trajectory, but larger masses of gas are swept up and overflow at smaller, but
still highly supersonic, velocities. If cooling is inefficient, overflow still
occurs, but there is no coherent stream inward of the disk rim. Qualitatively,
the resulting structure appears as a bulge extending downstream along the disk
rim. We calculate the mass fraction and velocity of the overflowing component
as a function of the important system parameters, and discuss the implications
of the results for X-ray observations and doppler tomography of cataclysmic
variables, low-mass X-ray binaries and supersoft X-ray sources.Comment: 16 pages, including 8 figures. 1 color figure as a jpeg. ApJ, in
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