Accretion-Disk Corona Advected by External Radiation Drag

Extract

Accretion-disk corona (ADC) is required from observational as well as theoretical reasons. In almost all of traditional studies, however, a stationary corona has been assumed; i.e., the corona gas corotates with the underlying (Keplerian) accretion disk, and the radial motion is ignored. Recently, in the theory of accretion disks a radiative interaction between the gas and the external radiation field has attracted the attention of researchers. In particular the radiation drag between the gas and the external radiation field becomes important from the viewpoint of the angular-momentum removal. We thus examine the effect of radiation drag on the accretion-disk corona above/below the accretion disk (Watanabe, Fukue 1996a, b). We suppose that an accretion disk can be described by the standard disk, and that radiation fields are produced by the central luminous source and the accretion disk, itself. In general an accretion-disk corona under the influence of strong radiation fields dynamically infalls (advected) toward the center.