The role of Compton heating in radiation-regulated accretion on to black holes

Abstract

We investigate the role of Compton heating in radiation-regulated accretion on to black holes (BHs) from a neutral dense medium using 1D radiation-hydrodynamic simulations. We focus on the relative effects of Compton-heating and photoheating as a function of the spectral slope a, assuming a power-law spectrum in the energy range of 13.6 eV-100 keV. While Compton heating is dominant only close to the BH, it can reduce the accretion rate to 0.1 (l ∝ m2 model)-0.01 per cent (l ∝ m model) of the Bondi accretion rate when the BH radiation is hard (α ~ 1), where l and m are the luminosity and accretion rate normalized by Eddington rates, respectively. The oscillatory behaviour otherwise typically seen in simulations with α > 1, become suppressed when α ~ 1 only for the l ∝ m model. The relative importance of the Compton heating over photoheating decreases and the oscillatory behaviour becomes stronger as the spectrum softens.When the spectrum is soft (α > 1.5), photoheating prevails regardless of models making the effect of Compton heating negligible. On the scale of the ionization front, where the gas supply into the Strömgren sphere from large scale is regulated, photoheating dominates. Our simulations show consistent results with the advection-dominated accretion flow (l ∝ m2) where the accretion is inefficient and the spectrum is hard (α ~ 1).