Spectrum of dust heated by thick accretion disks of pregalactic black holes

We discuss the spectrum of dust heated by accretion disks of SMOs and the effect of the re-radiation on the cosmic muwave background. The main results are: (1) Whether or not there is Lymanalpha cutoff, the dust radiation in the case of SMOs is very strong and will appreciatively distort the muwave background. (2) In spite of (1), the dust radiation spectrum is different when Lyman-α cutoff is present and when it is absent (see Fig.2), and the two cases can be distinguished observationally. An infrared search in the range 200–900 μm would be useful in this connection.     

Monte Carlo calculation of comptonization effects in spherical accretion onto black holes

Spherical accretion onto black holes at high accretion rates leads to temperatures and optical depths for which Comptonization of the emerging radiation plays an important role, altering both the plasma temperature and the emergent spectrum. In this paper the nonlocal effects of Comptonization are accounted for by numerically modeling the scattering process with Monte Carlo techniques. Calculations are performed for black hole masses ranging from 10¹–10⁹ M and are compared with the local scattering model of Ipser and Price (1983). It is found that the local scattering approximation underestimates the energy in the X-ray portion of the spectrum. Monte Carlo calculations shows that the spectrum flattens and the spectral index decreases to values about 20% below those obtained by using the local scattering approximation.     

Small-scale inviscid accretion discs around black holes

Gas falling quasi-spherically on to a black hole forms an inner accretion disc if its specific angular momentum l exceeds l ∗∼ r _g c , where r _g is the Schwarzschild radius. The standard disc model assumes l ≫ l ∗. We argue that, in many black hole sources, accretion flows have angular momenta just above the threshold for disc formation, l ≳ l ∗, and assess the accretion mechanism in this regime. In a range l ∗< l < l _cr, a small-scale disc forms in which gas spirals fast into the black hole without any help from horizontal viscous stresses. Such an 'inviscid' disc, however, interacts inelastically with the feeding infall. The disc–infall interaction determines the dynamics and luminosity of the accretion flow. The inviscid disc radius can be as large as 14 r _g, and the energy release peaks at 2 r _g. The disc emits a Comptonized X-ray spectrum with a break at ∼100 keV. This accretion regime is likely to take place in wind-fed X-ray binaries and is also possible in active galactic nuclei.     

The relativistic spherical accretion by black holes

The relativistic spherical accretion onto black holes is considered. It is shown that electron heat conductivity and ion viscosity increase the ion temperature by roughly two orders of magnitude over the electron temperature at Schwarzschild radius. As a result, the knee arise in gamma-radiation spectrum at 10–30 MeV. The role of magnetic field, electron-positron pairs production and generation of absorption lines in spectrum briefly discussed.     

Mass-losing accretion discs around supermassive black holes

We study the effects of outflow/wind on the gravitational stability of accretion discs around supermassive black holes using a set of analytical steady-state solutions. Mass-loss rate by the outflow from the disc is assumed to be a power-law of the radial distance and the amount of the energy and the angular momentum which are carried away by the wind are parameterized phenomenologically. We show that the mass of the first clumps at the self-gravitating radius linearly decreases with the total mass-loss rate of the outflow. Except for the case of small viscosity and high accretion rate, generally, the self-gravitating radius increases as the amount of mass-loss by the outflow increases. Our solutions show that as more angular momentum is lost by the outflow, then reduction to the mass of the first clumps is more significant.     

Super-Eddington accretion discs around Kerr black holes

We calculate the structure of the accretion disc around a rapidly rotating black hole with a super-Eddington accretion rate. The luminosity and height of the disc are reduced by the advection effect. In the case of large viscosity parameter, α>0.03, the accretion flow deviates strongly from thermodynamic equilibrium and overheats in the central region. With increasing accretion rate, the flow temperature steeply increases, reaches maximum, and then falls off. The maximum is achieved in the advection-dominated regime of accretion. The maximum temperature in the disc around a massive black hole of M =10⁸ M⊙ with α=0.3 is of order 3×10⁸ K. The discs with large accretion rates can emit X-rays in quasars as well as in galactic black hole candidates.     

Models of high-luminosity accretion disks surrounding black holes

The problem of steady-state accretion to nonrotating black holes is examined. Advection is included and generalized formulas for the radiation pressure in both the optically thick and thin cases are used. Special attention is devoted to models with a high accretion rate. Global solutions for accretion disks are studied which describe a continuous transition between an optically thick outer region and an optically thin inner region. It is shown that there is a maximum disk temperature for the model with a viscosity parameter α = 0.5. For the model with α = 0.1, no optically thin regions are found to exist for any accretion rate.     

Behaviour of dissipative accretion flows around black holes

We investigate the behaviour of dissipative accreting matter close to a black hole, as this provides important observational features of galactic and extragalactic black hole candidates. We find a complete set of global solutions in the presence of viscosity and synchrotron cooling. We show that advective accretion flow can have a standing shock wave and the dynamics of the shock is controlled by the dissipation parameters (both viscosity and cooling). We study the effective region of the parameter space for standing as well as oscillating shock. We find that the shock front always moves towards the black hole as the dissipation parameters are increased. However, viscosity and cooling have opposite effects in deciding the solution topologies. We obtain two critical cooling parameters that separate the nature of the accretion solution.     

Radiation hydrodynamics of high-luminosity accretion into black holes

To extend Shapiro's (1973a, b) calculations of black hole accretion to the regimes of interstellar gas densities and of black hole masses for which emergent luminosities are expected to be high, the radiation hydrodynamics of spherically symmetric gas flows in static isotropic metrics is discussed. Since for the more luminous objects the optical depth of the accretion volume becomes large, particular attention has to be paid to radiative transfer through non-Euclidean spaces, and a method for solving the full transfer problem is presented. The method is applied to accretion into black holes of mass between 10M and 10⁵ M , under the conservative assumption that all other heat sources, like dissipation of magnetic or turbulent energy, can be neglected in comparison to the compressional work term,p dV. In the interstellar gas parameter range of interest, the radiation field is then dominated by emission and absorption of synchrotron radiation from inner zones of the flow. Temperature stratifications, luminosities and emergent spectra resulting from these processes are calculated.     

Dark matter accretion wakes of high-redshift black holes

Anisotropic emission of gravitational waves during the merger of black holes induces a recoil velocity on the centre of mass of the binary and the final merger product can then be ejected from its host galaxy. We consider ejected black holes which stay on bound orbits around their host haloes. A recoiled black hole which moves on an almost radial orbit outside the virial radius of its central galaxy, in the cold dark matter background, reaches its apapsis in a finite time. Due to small dark matter velocity dispersion at high redshifts and also the small black hole velocity near the apapsis passage a high-density wake forms around these black hole. Gamma-ray emission can result from the enhancement of dark matter annihilation in these wakes. The diffuse high-energy gamma-ray background from the ensemble of such black holes in the Hubble volume is also evaluated.     

Radial self-gravity of accretion disc around supermassive black holes

This paper studies the properties of self-gravity of accretion discs around supermassive black holes. With integration on the thin disc configuration, this paper has calculated the radial and vertical components of self-gravity of accretion discs. The discussion mainly concentrates on the radial component, and the results are briefly as follows: for accretion discs around supermassive black holes (M10 ⁸–10¹⁰ M). At the distance where (R/R _g)10⁵–10⁴, the radial component of self-gravity dominates over the central one where the dynamical structure of the accretion discs completely differs from that of Keplerian disc. A turbulence driven by radial self-gravity instability as a kind of energy source is proposed. This paper has two criteria for the comparison of magnitude between the self-gravity of accretion discs and the gravity of the central black hole, from which an analytic estimation for the outer radius of the accretion discs has been derived. The results of this paper may be used to explain the accretion discs of quasars and AGNs.This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China.     

Spectral properties of the accretion discs around rotating black holes

We study the radiation properties of an accretion disc around a rotating black hole. We solve the hydrodynamic equations and calculate the transonic solutions of accretion disc in the presence of shocks. Then we use these solutions to generate the radiation spectrum in the presence of radiative heating and cooling processes. We present the effect of spin parameter of the black hole on the emitted radiation spectrum. In addition, attention has also been paid to the variation in energy spectral index with Kerr parameter and accretion rate. We find that spectral index becomes harder as the spin parameter changes from negative (accretion disc is counter-rotating with respect to the black hole spin) to a positive value. Finally, we compute and compare the spectral characteristics due to a free-fall flow and a transonic flow. We notice significant differences in high energy contributions from these two solutions.     

The evolution of misaligned accretion discs and spinning black holes

In this paper, we consider the process of alignment of a spinning black hole and a surrounding misaligned accretion disc. We use a simplified set of equations, that describe the evolution of the system in the case where the propagation of warping disturbances in the accretion disc occurs diffusively, a situation likely to be common in the thin discs in active galactic nuclei (AGN). We also allow the direction of the hole spin to move under the action of the disc torques. In such a way, the evolution of the hole–disc system is computed self-consistently. We consider a number of different situations and we explore the relevant parameter range, by varying the location of the warp radius R _w and the propagation speed of the warp. We find that the dissipation associated with the twisting of the disc results in a large increase in the accretion rate through the disc, so that AGN accreting from a misaligned disc are likely to be significantly more luminous than those accreting from a flat disc. We compute explicitly the time-scales for the warping of the disc and for the alignment process and compare our results with earlier estimates based on simplified steady-state solutions. We also confirm earlier predictions that, under appropriate circumstances, accretion can proceed in a counter-aligned fashion, so that the accreted material will spin-down the hole, rather than spinning it up. Our results have implication in a number of different observational features of AGN such as the orientation and shape of jets, the shape of X-ray iron lines and the possibility of obscuration and absorption of X-ray by the outer disc as well as the general issue of the spin history of black holes during their growth.