Multi-transonic spherical-type flows around massive black holes: galactic potential induced standing isothermal shocks

Abstract

Abstract Accretion on length-scales of interstellar or even intergalactic is particularly relevant, in the context of spherical or quasi-spherical hot mode accretion, supposedly powering low excitation radio galaxies in the maintenance-mode feedback paradigm. In the present study, we aim to analyze such a spherical-type flow around the host active nucleus in the backdrop of a five-component galactic system (SMBH, stellar, dark matter, diffuse hot gas, Λ), with the principal intent to address the issue of galactic potential induced shock formation in the flow, that may contain (dissipative) isothermal standing shocks. The present paper is an extension of Raychaudhuri et al. (2018) [83], who conducted a preliminary investigation of such a problem. The galactic potential, not only renders the flow to be multi-transonic in nature, the flow topology resembles `Xα' and `α X' type trajectories of advective flows in the vicinity of the BHs/compact objects. Owing to the influence of the galactic potential, the entire range of galactic mass-to-light ratio (ΥB) allows shock formation in central to the outer radial regions of our wind-type flows, with the strength of those galactic induced shocks found to be comparable to that of the shocks one would expect in the advective flows in the vicinity of a BH. We also observe that the shock parameters remain sensitive to ΥB. We discussed the possible implication of these shocks in the context of radio source dynamics as well as their potential association with flaring in radio jets. Our study also reveals that galactic potential could substantially augment the mass inflow rate.