Publication Date:
2015-08-14
Description:
Accretion flows around black holes generally result in mass-outflows that exhibit irregular behaviour quite often. Using 2D time-dependent hydrodynamical calculations, we show that the mass-outflow is unstable in the cases of thick accretion flows such as the low angular momentum accretion flow and the advection-dominated accretion flow. For the low angular momentum flow, the inward accreting matter on the equatorial plane interacts with the outflowing gas along the rotational axis and the centrifugally supported oblique shock is formed at the interface of both the flows, when the viscosity parameter α is as small as α ≤ 10 –3 . The hot and rarefied blobs, which result in the eruptive mass-outflow, are generated in the inner shocked region and grow up towards the outer boundary. The advection-dominated accretion flow attains finally in the form of a torus disc with the inner edge of the disc at 3 R g ≤ r ≤ 6 R g and the centre at 6 R g ≤ r ≤ 10 R g , and a series of hot blobs is intermittently formed near the inner edge of the torus and grows up along the outer surface of the torus. As a result, the luminosity and the mass-outflow rate are modulated irregularly where the luminosity is enhanced by 10–40 per cent and the mass-outflow rate is increased by a factor of few up to 10. We interpret the unstable nature of the outflow to be due to the Kelvin–Helmholtz instability, examining the Richardson number for the Kelvin–Helmholtz criterion in the inner region of the flow. We propose that the flare phenomena of Sgr A* may be induced by the unstable mass-outflow as is found in this work.
Print ISSN:
0035-8711
Electronic ISSN:
1365-2966
Topics:
Physics
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