Accretion onto Intermediate-Mass Black Holes in Dense Protogalactic Clouds

Understand

We present the first results from two-dimensional simulations of radiatively-efficient accretion of metal-free gas onto intermediate-mass black holes.

• We fix the shape of the spectral energy distribution of the radiation produced near the event horizon and study the structure of the irradiated low-angular-momentum accretion flow over three orders of magnitude in radius from the black hole, 10^{14}-10^{17} cm for a 100 M_sun black hole.
• The luminosity of the central source is made to be proportional to the rate at which gas accretes across the inner boundary, which we set just inside the sonic radius.
• We find that photoionization heating and radiation pressure modify the structure of the flow.