2002/07/19 by Tiziana Di Matteo, Rosalba Perna, Ramesh Narayan · 356 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Accretion (finance) #Astronomy #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics #Black hole (networking) #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Neutrino #Neutrino oscillation #Particle physics #Physics #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #RADIUS #Schwarzschild radius #Solar neutrino #Solar neutrino problem #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/342832
published in The Astrophysical Journal 579(2), 706-715 (IOP Publishing) · 23 pages, added reference, corrected typo and bremsstrahlung formula
arxiv created 2002/07/19 · openalex publication_date 2002/11/04 · arxiv updated 2010/04/06 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Many models of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) invoke a central engine consisting of a black hole of a few solar masses accreting matter from a disk at a rate of a fraction to a few solar masses per second. Popham et al. and Narayan et al. have shown that, for ≳ 0.1 M ☉ s -1 , accretion proceeds via neutrino cooling and neutrinos can carry away a significant amount of energy from the inner regions of the disks. We improve on these calculations by including a simple prescription for neutrino transfer and neutrino opacities in such regions. We find that the flows become optically thick to neutrinos inside a radius R ~ 6 R S -40 R S for in the range of 0.1-10 M ☉ s -1 , where R S is the black hole Schwarzchild radius. Most of the neutrino emission comes from outside this region, and the neutrino luminosity stays roughly constant at a value L ν ~ 10 53 ergs s -1 . We show that, for ≳ 1 M ☉ s -1 , neutrinos are sufficiently trapped that energy advection becomes the dominant cooling mechanism in the flow. These results imply that ν annihilation in hyperaccreting black holes is an inefficient mechanism for liberating large amounts of energy. Extraction of rotational energy by magnetic processes remains the most viable mechanism.