ACCRETION ONTO COMPACT OBJECTS VIEWED AS A FLOW IN CONVERGING-DIVERGING DUCTS

Abstract

Black hole accretion is necessarily transonic and the number of physical sonic points depends on the angular momentum of the flow. We study the properties of such a flow by recasting this idea into an engineering problem in which a flow has a subsonic to supersonic transition when it passes through a de Laval nozzle, i.e. a converging and diverging duct in a flat geometry in the presence of sufficient end pressure difference. Particularly interesting is the case of the centrifugal pressure supported standing shock formation inside an accretion flow, because the flow passes through at least two saddle type sonic points, one before and one after the shock. In this case, the duct itself has two minima and a maximum. We study the properties of such a duct as a function of the inflow parameters and classify all possible types of the flow through this composite nozzle.