Numerical Simulations of Black Hole Accretion

Thu, October 22, 2015

Accreting black holes are observed in a large variety of systems in astronomy: active galactic nuclei, X-ray binaries, tidal disruption events, gamma-ray bursts. While analytical one-dimensional models have been enormously useful for understanding several aspects of accretion physics, other aspects such as the formation of jets and winds are beyond the scope of such models. Numerical general relativistic MHD simulations are able to include more physics than analytical models and are proving increasingly useful for studying the multidimensional gas dynamics and radiative properties of accretion flows. The talk will review current progress in this field.