On the Physical Nature of Accretion Disc Viscosity

Authors

Rebecca Martin, University of Nevada, Las VegasFollow
C. J. Nixon, University of LeicesterFollow
J. E. Pringle, University of Leicester
Mario Livio, University of Nevada, Las VegasFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-7-2019

Publication Title

New Astronomy

Volume

70

First page number:

7

Last page number:

11

Abstract

We use well–established observational evidence to draw conclusions about the fundamental nature of the viscosity in accretion discs. To do this, we first summarise the observational evidence for the value of the dimensionless accretion disc viscosity parameter α, defined by Shakura and Sunyaev (1973, 1976). We find that, for fully ionized discs, the value of α is readily amenable to reliable estimation and that the observations are consistent with the hypothesis that ... (see full text for complete abstract)

Keywords

Accretion; Accretion discs; Galaxies: nuclei; Magnetohydrodynamics (MHD); Black hole physics; Stars: pre-main sequence

Disciplines

Astrophysics and Astronomy

Language

English

Repository Citation

Martin, R., Nixon, C. J., Pringle, J. E., Livio, M. (2019). On the Physical Nature of Accretion Disc Viscosity. New Astronomy, 70 7-11.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.newast.2019.01.001