On the Steady Nature of Line‐driven Disk Winds: Application to Cataclysmic Variables

Abstract

We apply the semianalytical analysis of the steady nature of line-driven winds presented in two earlier papers to disk winds driven by the flux distribution of a standard Shakura & Sunyaev disk for typical cataclysmic variable (CV) parameters. Our main conclusion is that a line-driven wind, arising from a steady disk flux distribution of a standard Shakura-Sunyaev disk, is steady. These results are consistent with the steady velocity nature of outflows observationally inferred for both CVs and quasi-stellar objects (QSOs). We find good agreement with the 2.5-dimensional CV disk wind models of Pereyra and collaborators. We find that the wind critical point tends to be closer to the disk surface toward the inner disk regions.