Advection‐dominated Accretion: Global Transonic Solutions

Abstract

We obtained global transonic solutions representing optically thin advection-dominated accretion flow by solving the full set of differential equations describing such systems. We found that far from the sonic point self-similar solutions are an excellent approximation of the global flow structure if the accretion rate is well below the maximum value above which no optically thin solutions exist. © 1997. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.