Modeling the response of a standard accretion disc to stochastic viscous fluctuations

TL;DR

This paper uses hydrodynamical simulations to study how viscous fluctuations in a standard accretion disc cause variability in accretion rates and time-lags, aligning with observed X-ray binary behaviors.

Contribution

It provides a detailed numerical analysis of viscous fluctuation effects on accretion rate variability and time-lags, confirming and extending previous analytical models.

Findings

Time-lag scales as f^{-0.54} for certain frequencies.

Inner accretion rate power spectrum follows a power-law.

Viscous fluctuations produce observable frequency-dependent time-lags.

Abstract

The observed variability of X-ray binaries over a wide range of time-scales can be understood in the framework of a stochastic propagation model, where viscous fluctuations at different radii induce accretion rate variability that propagate inwards to the X-ray producing region. The scenario successfully explains the power spectra, the linear rms-flux relation as well as the time-lag between different energy photons. The predictions of this model have been obtained using approximate analytical solutions or empirically motivated models which take into account the effect of these propagating variability on the radiative process of complex accretion flows. Here, we study the variation of the accretion rate due to such viscous fluctuations using a hydro-dynamical code for the standard geometrically thin, gas pressure dominated $\alpha$-disc with a zero torque boundary condition. Our results confirm earlier findings that the time-lag between a perturbation and the resultant inner accretion rate variation depends on the frequency (or time-period) of the perturbation. Here we have quantified that the time-lag $t_{lag} \propto f^{-0.54}$, for time-periods less than the viscous time-scale of the perturbation radius and is nearly constant otherwise. This, coupled with radiative process would produce the observed frequency dependent time-lag between different energy bands. We also confirm that if there are random Gaussian fluctuations of the $\alpha$-parameter at different radii, the resultant inner accretion rate has a power spectrum which is a power-law.