DOE OSTI2014
The absence of thermal instability in the high/soft state of black hole X-ray binaries, in disagreement with the standard thin disk theory, has been a long-standing riddle for theoretical astronomers. We have tried to resolve this question by studying the thermal stability of a thin disk with magnetically driven winds in the M-dot −Σ plane. It is found that disk winds can greatly decrease the disk temperature and thus help the disk become more stable at a given accretion rate. The critical accretion rate, M-dot {sub crit}, corresponding to the thermal instability threshold, is significantly increased in the presence of disk winds. For α = 0.01 and B {sub φ} = 10B {sub p}, the disk is quite stable even for a very weak initial poloidal magnetic field [β{sub p,0}∼2000,β{sub p}=(P{sub gas}+P{sub rad})/(B{sub p}{sup 2}/8π)]. However, when B {sub φ} = B {sub p} or B {sub φ} = 0.1B {sub p}, a somewhat stronger (but still weak) field (β{sub p,} {sub 0} ∼ 200 or β{sub p,} {sub 0} ∼ 20) is required to make the disk stable. Nevertheless, despite the great increase of M-dot {sub crit}, the luminosity threshold, corresponding to instability, remains almost constant or decreases slowly with increasing M-dot {sub crit} due to decreased gas temperature. The advection and diffusion timescales of the large-scale magnetic field threading the disk are also investigated in this work. We find that the advection timescale can be smaller than the diffusion timescale in a disk with winds, because the disk winds take away most of the gravitational energy released in the disk, resulting in the decrease of the magnetic diffusivity η and the increase of the diffusion timescale.
79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗