Structure of radiation dominated gravitoturbulent quasar discs

TL;DR

This paper develops new analytical models for radiation-influenced gravitoturbulent quasar discs, revealing how radiation pressure alters their structure, stability, and black hole growth limits compared to gas-pressure-only models.

Contribution

It introduces analytical solutions for gravitoturbulent discs with radiation and gas pressures, detailing how radiation modifies disc profiles and stability criteria.

Findings

Stress parameter increases with radius, depending on accretion rate.

Surface density profile becomes shallower with radiation, especially at sub-Eddington rates.

Critical stress parameter for fragmentation depends on gas-to-total pressure ratio, with an exponent around 1.7.

Abstract

Self-gravitating accretion discs in a gravitoturbulent state, including radiation and gas pressures, are studied using a set of new analytical solutions. While the Toomre parameter of the disc remains close to its critical value for the onset of gravitational instability, the dimensionless stress parameter is uniquely determined from the thermal energy reservoir of the disc and its cooling rate. Our solutions are applicable to the accretion discs with dynamically important radiation pressure like in the quasars discs. We show that physical quantities of a gravitoturbulent disc in the presence of radiation are significantly modified compared to solutions with only gas pressure. We show that the dimensionless stress parameter is an increasing function of the radial distance so that its steepness strongly depends on the accretion rate. In a disc without radiation its slope is 4.5, however, we show that in the presence of radiation, it varies between 2 and 4.5 depending on the accretion rate and the central mass. As for the surface density, we find a shallower profile with an exponent -2 in a disc with sub-Eddington accretion rate compared to a similar disc, but without radiation, where its surface density slope is -3 independent of the accretion rate. We then investigate gravitational stability of the disc when the stress parameter reaches to its critical value. In order to self-consistently determine the fragmentation boundary, however, it is shown that the critical value of the stress parameter is a power-law function of the ratio of gas pressure and the total pressure and its exponent is around 1.7. We also estimate the maximum mass of the central black hole using our analytical solutions.