Migration of Accreting Planets and Black Holes in Disks

TL;DR

This study uses 2D hydrodynamic simulations to explore how accretion influences the migration of planets and black holes in disks, revealing that accretion can lead to outward migration contrary to traditional inward migration models.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed simulation framework considering angular momentum exchange via gravity, accretion, pressure, and viscosity, highlighting the impact of accretion on migration direction.

Findings

Accretion can cause outward migration of planets and black holes.

Steady state mass and angular momentum fluxes are achieved in simulations.

Standard migration models may not apply to accreting bodies.

Abstract

Nascent planets are thought to lose angular momentum (AM) to the gaseous protoplanetary disk via gravitational interactions, leading to inward migration. A similar migration process also applies to stellar-mass black holes (BHs) embedded in the disks of active galactic nuclei. However, AM exchange via accretion onto the planet/BH may strongly influence the migration torque. In this study, we perform 2D global hydrodynamic simulations of an accreting planet/BH embedded in a disk, where AM exchange between the planet/BH and disk via gravity, accretion, pressure, and viscosity are considered. When accretion is turned off, we recover the linear estimate for Type I migration torque. However, for the two planet masses we investigated with our accreting simulations, we find outward migration due to the positive AM deposited onto the accreting body by the disk gas. Our simulations achieve the global steady state for the transport of mass and AM: The mass and AM fluxes are constant across the disk except for jumps ($\Delta\dot M$ and $\Delta\dot J$) at the planet's location, and the jumps match the accretion rate and torque on the planet. Our findings suggest that caution is needed when applying the standard results of disk migration to accreting planets and BHs.