2008/08/31 by Rebecca Shafee, Jonathan C. McKinney, Ramesh Narayan +3 · 184 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Accretion (finance) #Accretion disc #Angular momentum #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Circular orbit #Magnetic flux #Magnetohydrodynamic drive #Magnetohydrodynamics #RADIUS #Thin disk #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/593148
published in The Astrophysical Journal 687(1), L25-L28 (IOP Publishing) · 4 pages, 4 figures, ApJL accepted
arxiv created 2008/09/12 · openalex publication_date 2008/10/03 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
We describe three-dimensional general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations of a geometrically thin accretion disk around a nonspinning black hole. The disk has a thickness h / r ∼ 0.05–0.1 over the radial range (2–20) GM/ c 2 . In steady state, the specific angular momentum profile of the inflowing magnetized gas deviates by less than 2% from that of the standard thin disk model of Novikov and Thorne. Also, the magnetic torque at the radius of the innermost stable circular orbit (ISCO) is only ~2% of the inward flux of angular momentum at this radius. Both results indicate that magnetic coupling across the ISCO is relatively unimportant for geometrically thin disks.