A supercritical accretion disk with radiation-driven outflows

TL;DR

This paper models supercritical accretion disks with radiation-driven outflows, showing how outflows influence disk luminosity, black hole growth, and observed light curves in tidal disruption events, with implications for galaxy feedback.

Contribution

It introduces a dynamical model for outflows in supercritical disks including radial energy advection, revealing the impact on luminosity and black hole growth.

Findings

Most inflowing gas is driven into outflows at moderate Eddington rates.

Disk luminosity is significantly suppressed due to outflows.

The model explains the slow decline of TDE light curves.

Abstract

Outflows are inevitably driven from the disk if the vertical component of the black hole (BH) gravity cannot resist the radiation force. We derive the mass loss rate in the outflows by solving a dynamical equation for the vertical gas motion in the disk. The structure of a supercritical accretion disk is calculated with the radial energy advection included. We find that most inflowing gas is driven into outflows if the disk is accreting at a moderate Eddington-scaled rate (up to $\sim 100$) at its outer edge, i.e., only a small fraction of gas is accreted by the BH, which is radiating at several Eddington luminosities, while it reaches around ten for extremely high accretion rate cases ($\dot{m}\equiv\dot{M}/\dot{M}_{\rm Edd}\sim 1000$). Compared with a normal slim disk, the disk luminosity is substantially suppressed due to the mass loss in the outflows. We apply the model to the light curves of the tidal disruption events (TDEs), and find that the disk luminosity declines very slowly with time even if a typical accretion rate $\dot{m}\propto t^{-5/3}$ is assumed at the outer edge of the disk, which is qualitatively consistent with the observed light curves in some TDEs, and helps understanding the energy deficient phenomenon observed in the TDEs. Strong outflows from supercritical accretion disks surrounding super massive BHs may play crucial roles on their host galaxies, which can be taken as an ingredient in the mechanical feedback models. The implications of the results on the growth of supper-massive BHs are also discussed.