6 September 2007

Speaker: Omer Blaes (UC Santa Barbara)

Title: Radiation MHD Simulations of the Vertical Structure of Black Hole Accretion Disks

Abstract:Significant theoretical progress has been made in understanding the dynamics of accretion disks since the discovery that magnetorotational turbulence is likely to be responsible for the anomalous angular momentum transport in many astrophysical disks. Thanks to large scale numerical simulations, we now have a much better understanding of the properties of this turbulent transport, and also how this turbulence may affect the global structure of the disk and its associated outflows and jets. However, the coupling of the turbulence to the thermodynamics (heating and cooling) of the flow has been largely neglected, and this has stymied efforts to build observationally testable models. I will discuss our most recent radiation MHD simulations of small portions of black hole accretion disks that incorporate all this physics, and also discuss how this may impact the observed properties of these systems.