Oscillations of the Eddington capture sphere
Journal article, 2012

We present a toy model of mildly super-Eddington, optically thin accretion onto a compact star in the Schwarzschild metric, which predicts periodic variations of luminosity when matter is supplied to the system at a constant accretion rate. These are related to the periodic appearance and disappearance of the Eddington capture sphere. In the model the frequency is found to vary inversely with the luminosity. If the input accretion rate varies (strictly) periodically, the luminosity variation is quasi-periodic, and the quality factor is inversely proportional to the relative amplitude of mass accretion fluctuations, with its largest value Q ≈ 1/(10 |δṀ/Ṁ|) attained in oscillations at about 1 to 2 kHz frequencies for a 2  M⊙ star.

Author

Maciej Wielgus

Adam Stahl

University of Gothenburg

Marek A Abramowicz

University of Gothenburg

Wlodek Kluźniak

Astronomy and Astrophysics

0004-6361 (ISSN) 1432-0746 (eISSN)

Vol. 545 9 artikel nr A123-

Subject Categories

Astronomy, Astrophysics and Cosmology

Roots

Basic sciences

DOI

10.1051/0004-6361/201220228

More information

Created

10/10/2017