HOT ACCRETION DISKS WITH ADVECTION

Abstract

The global structure of optically thin hot accretion disks with radial advection included has been investigated. We solve the full energy conservation equation explicitly and construct the radial structure of the disk. It is found that advection is a real cooling process and that there are two solutions co-exist for a given mass accretion rate less than a critical limit. One is fully advection cooling dominated and the other is dominated by local radiative cooling. The advection dominated accretion disks are hotter than the local cooling dominated disks; they are most probably in the two-temperature regime and effects such as electron-positron pair production and annihilation may need to be considered to study the microphysics of the hot plasma. However, the global disk structure will not be much affected by the local radiative process.