Optically thin accretion disks in the Kerr metric

Gunnlaugur Björnsson*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

5 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

We calculate the structure of an effectively optically thin and geometrically thin accretion disk in the Kerr geometry, including electron-positron pairs. We show that the properties of the disk solutions are strongly dependent on the angular momentum of the central black hole. We find that close to a rapidly rotating hole there can be an appreciable pair density even for modest accretion rates. Pair critical accretion rates recently discovered in Newtonian disk models are also shown to be present in the general relativistic models, and we show that the geometically thin disk approximations easily break down for rapidly rotating holes.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)765-769
Number of pages5
JournalAstrophysical Journal
Volume441
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 10 Mar 1995

Other keywords

  • Accretion, accretion disks
  • Black hole physics
  • Relativity

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