On dynamics of geometrically thin accretion disks

TL;DR

This paper derives exact solutions for steady-state thin accretion disks, revealing their thermal and dynamical properties, and explores the stability and turbulence phenomena in both magnetic and non-magnetic cases.

Contribution

It provides new exact solutions for thin accretion disks under different physical assumptions and analyzes their stability and turbulence characteristics.

Findings

Vertically isothermal disks are totally isothermal.

Adiabatic disks are highly non-adiabatic.

Pure hydrodynamic turbulence is possible in non-magnetic disks.

Abstract

Axisymmetric accretion disks in vicinity of a central compact body are studied. For the simple models such as vertically isothermal disks as well as adiabatic ones the exact solutions to the steady-state MHD (magneto-hydrodynamic) system were found under the assumption that the radial components of velocity and magnetic field are negligible. On the basis of the exact solution one may conclude that vertically isothermal disks will be totally isothermal. The exact solution for the case of adiabatic disk corroborates the view that thin disk accretion must be highly non-adiabatic. An intermediate approach, that is between the above-listed two, for the modeling of thin accretion disks is developed. In the case of non-magnetic disk, this approach enables to prove, with ease, that all solutions for the mid-plane circular velocity are unstable provided the disk is non-viscous. Hence, this approach enables to demonstrate that the pure hydrodynamic turbulence in accretion disks is possible. It is interesting that a turbulent magnetic disk tends to be Keplerian. This can easily be shown by assuming that the turbulent gas tends to flow with minimal losses, i.e. to have the Euler number as small as possible.