Accretion Disk Turbulence

Summary

I review recent developments in the theory of turbulence in centrifugally supported astrophysical disks. Turbulence in disks is astrophysically important because it can transport angular momentum through shear stresses and thus allow disks to evolve and accrete. Turbulence can be initiated by magnetic, gravitational, or purely hydrodynamic instabilities; I give an abbreviated review of the linear and nonlinear theory of each of these possibilities, and conclude with a list of problems.

Introduction

Spiral galaxies, quasars, active galactic nuclei, X-ray binaries, cataclysmic variables, and young stars: these are a few of the astronomical objects that contain disks. Disks are common in astrophysics because it is usually difficult to change the specific angular momentum of gas, but easy to radiate away its thermal energy. Gas injected into in a spherically symmetric potential thus naturally shocks, radiates, and settles down into a plane normal to its mean angular momentum.

Because they are so common, disks occupy a lot of the astronomical community's time and energy (that would otherwise be entirely dissipated in attempting to measure Ω₀). Although there are enormous differences between individual disk systems in global structure and observational appearance, there are a number of fluid dynamical processes common to all disks. These processes are worth understanding in detail.

The most fundamental process in disks, analogous to nuclear reactions in stars, is angular momentum transport. The disk cannot evolve unless gas in the disk can be persuaded to give up some of its angular momentum and spiral down the gravitational potential.