On different types of instabilities in black hole accretion discs: implications for X-ray binaries and active galactic nuclei

Abstract

We discuss two important instability mechanisms that may lead to the limit-cycle oscillations of the luminosity of the accretion disks around compact objects: ionization instability and radiation-pressure instability. Ionization instability is well established as a mechanism of X-ray novae eruptions in black hole binary systems but its applicability to AGN is still problematic. Radiation pressure theory has still very weak observational background in any of these sources. In the present paper we attempt to confront the parameter space of these instabilities with the observational data. At the basis of this simple survey of sources properties we argue that the radiation pressure instability is likely to be present in several Galactic sources with the Eddington ratios above 0.15, and in AGN with the Eddington ratio above 0.025. Our results favor the parameterization of the viscosity through the geometrical mean of the radiation and gas pressure both in Galactic sources and AGN. More examples of the quasi-regular outbursts in the timescales of 100 seconds in Galactic sources, and hundreds of years in AGN are needed to formulate firm conclusions. We also show that the disk sizes in the X-ray novae are consistent with the ionization instability. This instability may also considerably influence the lifetime cycle and overall complexity in the supermassive black hole environment.