Ya. B. Zeldovich and foundation of the accretion theory

This short review is dedicated to academician Yakov Borisovich Zeldovich, the science of his epoch and the creation of modern accretion theory.Comment: 11 pages, 25 figures, accepted to special volume of Astronomy Report

Viscous Stability of Relativistic Keplerian Accretion Disks

We investigate the viscous stability of thin, Keplerian accretion disks in regions where general relativistic (GR) effects are essential. For gas pressure dominated (GPD) disks, we show that the Newtonian conclusion that such disks are viscously stable is reversed by GR modifications in the behaviors of viscous stress and surface density over a significantly large annular region not far from the innermost stable orbit at r=\rms. For slowly-rotating central objects, this region spans a range of radii 14\lo r\lo 19 in units of the central object's mass $M$. For radiation pressure dominated (RPD) disks, the Newtonian conclusion that they are viscously unstable remains valid after including the above GR modifications, except in a very small annulus around $r\approx 14M$, which has a negligible influence. Inclusion of the stabilizing effect of the mass-inflow through the disk's inner edge via a GR analogue of Roche-lobe overflow adds a small, stable region around \rms~for RPD disks, but leaves GPD disks unchanged. We mention possible astrophysical relevance of these results, particularly to the high-frequency X-ray variabilities observed by the $Rossi$ $X-ray$ $Timing$ $Explorer$.Comment: 18 pages, 3 figures, accepted by The Astrophysical Journal Letter

Comment on Viscous Stability of Relativistic Keplerian Accretion Disks

Recently Ghosh (1998) reported a new regime of instability in Keplerian accretion disks which is caused by relativistic effects. This instability appears in the gas pressure dominated region when all relativistic corrections to the disk structure equations are taken into account. We show that he uses the stability criterion in completely wrong way leading to inappropriate conclusions. We perform a standard stability analysis to show that no unstable region can be found when the relativistic disk is gas pressure dominated.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, uses aasms4.sty, submitted for ApJ Letter

Photon Bubbles and the Vertical Structure of Accretion Disks

We consider the effects of "photon bubble" shock trains on the vertical structure of radiation pressure-dominated accretion disks. These density inhomogeneities are expected to develop spontaneously in radiation-dominated accretion disks where magnetic pressure exceeds gas pressure, even in the presence of magnetorotational instability. They increase the rate at which radiation escapes from the disk, and may allow disks to exceed the Eddington limit by a substantial factor. We first generalize the theory of photon bubbles to include the effects of finite optical depths and radiation damping. Modifications to the diffusion law at low optical depth tend to fill in the low-density regions of photon bubbles, while radiation damping inhibits the formation of photon bubbles at large radii, small accretion rates, and small heights above the equatorial plane. Accretion disks dominated by photon bubble transport may reach luminosities of 10 to >100 times the Eddington limit (L_E), depending on the mass of the central object, while remaining geometrically thin. However, photon bubble-dominated disks with alpha-viscosity are subject to the same thermal and viscous instabilities that plague standard radiation pressure-dominated disks, suggesting that they may be intrinsically unsteady. Photon bubbles can lead to a "core-halo" vertical disk structure. In super-Eddington disks the halo forms the base of a wind, which carries away substantial energy and mass, but not enough to prevent the luminosity from exceeding L_E. Photon bubble-dominated disks may have smaller color corrections than standard accretion disks of the same luminosity. They remain viable contenders for some ultraluminous X-ray sources and may play a role in the rapid growth of supermassive black holes at high redshift.Comment: 38 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journa

Counter-rotating Accretion Disks

We consider accretion disks consisting of counter-rotating gaseous components with an intervening shear layer. Configurations of this type may arise from the accretion of newly supplied counter-rotating gas onto an existing co-rotating gas disk. For simplicity we consider the case where the gas well above the disk midplane is rotating with angular rate $+\Omega$ and that well below has the same properties but is rotating with rate $-\Omega$. Using the Shakura-Sunyaev alpha turbulence model, we find self-similar solutions where a thin (relative to the full disk thickness) equatorial layer accretes very rapidly, essentially at free-fall speed. As a result the accretion speed is much larger than it would be for an alpha disk rotating in one direction. Counter-rotating accretion disks may be a transient stage in the formation of counter-rotating galaxies and in the accretion of matter onto compact objects.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, aas2pp4.sty, submitted to Ap

Accretion and Outflow in Active Galaxies

I review accretion and outflow in active galactic nuclei. Accretion appears to occur in a series of very small--scale, chaotic events, whose gas flows have no correlation with the large--scale structure of the galaxy or with each other. The accreting gas has extremely low specific angular momentum and probably represents only a small fraction of the gas involved in a galaxy merger, which may be the underlying driver. Eddington accretion episodes in AGN must be common in order for the supermassive black holes to grow. I show that they produce winds with velocities $v \sim 0.1c$ and ionization parameters implying the presence of resonance lines of helium-- and hydrogenlike iron. The wind creates a strong cooling shock as it interacts with the interstellar medium of the host galaxy, and this cooling region may be observable in an inverse Compton continuum and lower--excitation emission lines associated with lower velocities. The shell of matter swept up by the shocked wind stalls unless the black hole mass has reached the value $M_{\sigma}$ implied by the $M - \sigma$ relation. Once this mass is reached, further black hole growth is prevented. If the shocked gas did not cool as asserted above, the resulting (`energy-driven') outflow would imply a far smaller SMBH mass than actually observed. Minor accretion events with small gas fractions can produce galaxy-wide outflows, including fossil outflows in galaxies where there is little current AGN activity.Comment: invited review, IAU Symposium 267, Co-Evolution of Central Black Holes and Galaxies, B.M. Peterson, R.S. Somerville, and T. Storchi-Bergmann, eds typos in eq (2.2) correcte