Particle Acceleration in Advection-Dominated Accretion Disks with Shocks: Green's Function Energy Distribution

TL;DR

This paper models how relativistic particles are accelerated and escape in advection-dominated accretion disks with shocks, revealing how energy is transferred and producing predictions for observable radiation.

Contribution

It introduces a self-consistent model of particle acceleration, escape, and energy distribution in accretion disks with shocks, linking disk dynamics to relativistic outflows.

Findings

Relativistic particle distribution exhibits a flat power-law tail at high energies.

Escaping particles carry away significant energy and entropy from the disk.

The model predicts the spectrum of secondary radiation from escaping particles.

Abstract

The distribution function describing the acceleration of relativistic particles in an advection-dominated accretion disk is analyzed using a transport formalism that includes first-order Fermi acceleration, advection, spatial diffusion, and the escape of particles through the upper and lower surfaces of the disk. When a centrifugally-supported shock is present in the disk, the concentrated particle acceleration occurring in the vicinity of the shock channels a significant fraction of the binding energy of the accreting gas into a population of relativistic particles. These high-energy particles diffuse vertically through the disk and escape, carrying away both energy and entropy and allowing the remaining gas to accrete. The dynamical structure of the disk/shock system is computed self-consistently using a model previously developed by the authors that successfully accounts for the production of the observed relativistic outflows (jets) in M87 and \SgrA. This ensures that the rate at which energy is carried away from the disk by the escaping relativistic particles is equal to the drop in the radial energy flux at the shock location, as required for energy conservation. We investigate the influence of advection, diffusion, and acceleration on the particle distribution by computing the nonthermal Green's function, which displays a relatively flat power-law tail at high energies. We also obtain the energy distribution for the particles escaping from the disk, and we conclude by discussing the spectrum of the observable secondary radiation produced by the escaping particles.