2002/02/19 by Indranil Chattopadhyay, Sandip K. Chakrabarti · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Drag #Dust and Plasma Wave Phenomena #Electron #Flow (mathematics) #Flow velocity #Photon #Plasma #Radiation #Radiation pressure #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1046/j.1365-8711.2002.05424.x
published as Mon.Not.Roy.Astron.Soc. 333 (2002) 454 · Accepted for publication in MNRAS
arxiv created 2002/02/19 · openalex publication_date 2002/06/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Matter accreting on to black holes may develop shocks due to the centrifugal barrier. Some of the inflowing matter in the post-shock flow is deflected along the axis in the form of jets. Post-shock flow which behaves like a Compton cloud has ‘hot’ electrons emitting high-energy photons. We study the effect of these ‘hot’ photons on the outflowing matter. Radiation from this region could accelerate the outflowing matter, but radiation pressure should also slow it down. We show that the radiation drag restricts the flow from attaining a very high velocity. We introduce the concept of an ‘equilibrium velocity’(veq∼0.5c), which sets the upper limit of the terminal velocity achieved by a cold plasma due to radiation deposition force in the absence of gravity. If the injection energy is Ein, then we find that the terminal velocity v∞ satisfies a relation .