# Neutrino-dominated accretion flows as the central engine of gamma-ray bursts

## TL;DR

This paper reviews the theoretical understanding of neutrino-dominated accretion flows around black holes and their role as the central engine in gamma-ray bursts, covering structure, jet production, and observational signatures.

## Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of NDAF properties, their application to GRB phenomenology, and the potential for multi-messenger observations to probe these accretion flows.

## Key findings

- NDAFs can produce the high luminosities observed in GRBs.
- Jet power depends on black hole parameters and accretion rates.
- Multi-messenger signals can help identify NDAF activity in GRBs.

## Abstract

Neutrino-dominated accretion flows (NDAFs) around rotating stellar-mass black holes (BHs) are plausible candidates for the central engines of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). NDAFs are hyperaccretion disks with accretion rates in the range of around 0.001-10 $M_\odot ~\rm s^{-1}$, which have high density and temperature and therefore are extremely optically thick and geometrically slim or even thick. We review the theoretical progresses in studying the properties of NDAFs as well as their applications to the GRB phenomenology. The topics include: the steady radial and vertical structure of NDAFs and the implications for calculating neutrino luminosity and annihilation luminosity, jet power due to neutrino-antineutrino annihilation and Blandford-Znajek mechanism and their dependences on parameters such as BH mass, spin, and accretion rate, time evolution of NDAFs, effect of magnetic fields, applications of NDAF theories to the GRB phenomenology such as lightcurve variability, extended emission, X-ray flares, kilonovae, etc., as well as probing NDAFs using multi-messenger signals such as MeV neutrinos and gravitational waves.