Transition from radiatively inefficient to cooling dominated phase in two temperature accretion discs around black holes

TL;DR

This paper models the transition of accretion flows around black holes from radiatively inefficient to cooling dominated phases, incorporating cooling processes like bremsstrahlung, synchrotron, and inverse Comptonization, to explain observed high-energy emissions.

Contribution

It presents a comprehensive steady-state model of two-temperature accretion disks including explicit cooling mechanisms, analyzing phase transitions and their observational implications.

Findings

Flow temperature ranges from 10^8 to 10^{11.8} K.

Weakly viscous flows tend to be cooling dominated.

Model reproduces luminosities of various astrophysical sources.

Abstract

We investigate the transition of a radiatively inefficient phase of a viscous two temperature accreting flow to a cooling dominated phase and vice versa around black holes. Based on a global sub-Keplerian accretion disc model in steady state, including explicit cooling processes self-consistently, we show that general advective accretion flow passes through various phases during its infall towards a black hole. Bremsstrahlung, synchrotron and inverse Comptonization of soft photons are considered as possible cooling mechanisms. Hence the flow governs a much lower electron temperature ~10^8 - 10^{9.5}K compared to the hot protons of temperature ~10^{10.2} - 10^{11.8}K in the range of the accretion rate in Eddington units 0.01 - 100. Therefore, the solutions may potentially explain the hard X-rays and the gamma-rays emitted from AGNs and X-ray binaries. We finally compare the solutions for two different regimes of viscosity and conclude that a weakly viscous flow is expected to be cooling dominated compared to its highly viscous counterpart which is radiatively inefficient. The flow is successfully able to reproduce the observed luminosities of the under-fed AGNs and quasars (e.g. Sgr A*), ultra-luminous X-ray sources (e.g. SS433), as well as the highly luminous AGNs and ultra-luminous quasars (e.g. PKS 0743-67) at different combinations of the mass accretion rate and ratio of specific heats.