Transition from radiatively inefficient to cooling dominated phase in two temperature accretion discs around black holes

Monika Sinha & S. R. Rajesh & Banibrata Mukhopadhyay


(1) Astronomy and Astrophysics Program, Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560012, India

Paper: accepted in RAA


Abstract:

We investigate the transition of a radiatively inefficient phase of a viscous two temperature accreting flow to a cooling dominated phase and vice versa around black holes. Based on a global sub-Keplerian accretion disc model in steady state, including explicit cooling processes self-consistently, we show that general advective accretion flow passes through various phases during its infall towards a black hole. Bremsstrahlung, synchrotron and inverse Comptonization of soft photons are considered as possible cooling mechanisms. Hence the flow governs a much lower electron temperature 108-109.5K compared to the hot protons of temperature 1010.2-1011.8K in the range of the accretion rate in Eddington units 0.01\lsim\mdot\lsim 100. Therefore, the solutions may potentially explain the hard X-rays and the gamma -rays emitted from AGNs and X-ray binaries. We finally compare the solutions for two different regimes of viscosity and conclude that a weakly viscous flow is expected to be cooling dominated compared to its highly viscous counterpart which is radiatively inefficient. The flow is successfully able to reproduce the observed luminosities of the under-fed AGNs and quasars (e.g. Sgr A^*), ultra-luminous X-ray sources (e.g. SS433), as well as the highly luminous AGNs and ultra-luminous quasars (e.g. PKS 0743-67) at different combinations of the mass accretion rate and ratio of specific heats.


Preprints available from the authors at msinha@physics.iisc.ernet.in , or the raw TeX (no figures) if you click here.

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