Abstract
This review covers the main aspects of black hole accretion disk theory. We begin with the view that one of the main goals of the theory is to better understand the nature of black holes themselves. In this light we discuss how accretion disks might reveal some of the unique signatures of strong gravity: the event horizon, the innermost stable circular orbit, and the ergosphere. We then review, from a first-principles perspective, the physical processes at play in accretion disks. This leads us to the four primary accretion disk models that we review: Polish doughnuts (thick disks), Shakura-Sunyaev (thin) disks, slim disks, and advection-dominated accretion flows (ADAFs). After presenting the models we discuss issues of stability, oscillations, and jets. Following our review of the analytic work, we take a parallel approach in reviewing numerical studies of black hole accretion disks. We finish with a few select applications that highlight particular astrophysical applications: measurements of black hole mass and spin, black hole vs. neutron star accretion disks, black hole accretion disk spectral states, and quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs).
Highlights
Because of its firm connection to black holes themselves, black hole accretion disk theory belongs to the realm of fundamental physics
2 Three Destinations in Kerr’s Strong Gravity we briefly describe the three destinations within Kerr’s strong gravity that are most relevant to black hole accretion disk theory: 1. Event Horizon: That radius inside of which escape from the black hole is not possible; 2
The right-hand side of the energy equation (93) represents advective cooling. This is assumed to vanish in the Shakura–Sunyaev model, though we will see that it plays a critical role in slim disks (Section 6) and advection-dominated accretion flows (ADAFs) (Section 7)
Summary
Because of its firm connection to black holes themselves, black hole accretion disk theory belongs to the realm of fundamental physics. In our theory-minded Living Review we do not give detailed descriptions of their observational properties Instead, we stress their importance by starting our road map from the two classes of observed black holes: Destination 1: Quasars and other similar supermassive objects, which are collectively called “active galactic nuclei” (or AGN), having masses in the range 106 M⊙ < M < 109 M⊙. There is an important overlap region where various analytic and numerical methods are applicable and can be used to independently validate results Because of these close connections between analytic and numerical work, we have dedicated Section 11 to the discussion and review of direct numerical simulation of black hole accretion disks. We follow the common convention where Greek (Latin) indices are used for four-(three-)dimensional tensor quantities
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