Gamma-ray bursts and the runaway instability of thick discs around black holes
- 1 March 1997
- journal article
- Published by Oxford University Press (OUP) in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
- Vol. 285 (3)
- https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/285.3.l15
Abstract
In the context of cosmological models for gamma-ray bursts where the energy is extracted from a thick disc orbiting a stellar-mass black hole we discuss the stability of accretion when the specific angular momentum is increasing outwards in the disc. Discs with constant angular momentum are known to lead to a runaway instability, with catastrophic accretion taking place on a dynamical time-scale. We find that even a slight increase of the specific angular momentum outwards has a strong stabilizing effect on the accretion process. We finally comment on the limitations of our results, which are obtained with classical physics and neglecting the disc self-gravity.Keywords
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