1301.1102 (Shu Luo et al.)

Global Neutrino Heating in Hyperaccretion Flows    [PDF]

Shu Luo, Feng Yuan

The neutrino-dominated accretion flow (NDAF) with accretion rates \dot{M} = 0.01 - 10 M_{\sun} s^{-1} is a plausible candidate for the central engine of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). This hyperaccretion disk is optically thin to neutrinos in the radial direction, therefore the neutrinos produced at one radius can travel for a long distance in the disk. Those neutrinos can thus be absorbed with certain probability by the disk matter at the other radius and heat the disk there. The effect of this "global neutrino heating" has been ignored in previous works and is the focus of this paper. We find that around the "ignition" radius r_{ign}, the global neutrino heating rate could be comparable to or even larger than the local viscous heating rate thus must be an important process. Two possible consequences are in order if the "global neutrino heating" is taken into account: i) the temperature of the disk is slightly raised and the "ignition" radius r_{ign} slightly shifts to a larger radius, both lead to the increasing of the total neutrino flux; ii) what is more interesting is that, the temperature of the ADAF just beyond r_{ign} may be raised above the virial temperature thus the accretion will be suppressed. This may imply a serious challenge to the NDAF model. Self-consistent global calculations of NDAFs with the "global neutrino heating" included are required in the future to more precisely evaluate this effect.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1301.1102