Three-Dimensional General Relativistic Radiation Magnetohydrodynamical Simulation of Super-Eddington Accretion, using a new code HARMRAD with M1 Closure

Understand

Black hole (BH) accretion flows and jets are dynamic hot relativistic magnetized plasma flows whose radiative opacity can significantly affect flow structure and behavior.

• We describe a numerical scheme, tests, and an astrophysically relevant application using the M1 radiation closure within a new three-dimensional (3D) general relativistic (GR) radiation (R) magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) massively parallel code called HARMRAD.
• Our 3D GRRMHD simulation of super-Eddington accretion (about $20$ times Eddington) onto a rapidly rotating BH (dimensionless spin $j=0.9375$) shows sustained non-axisymmemtric disk turbulence, a persistent electromagnetic jet driven by the Blandford-Znajek effect, and a total radiative output consistently near the Eddington rate.
• The total accretion efficiency is of order $20\%$, the large-scale electromagnetic jet efficiency is of order $10\%$, and the total radiative efficiency that reaches large distances remains low at only order $1\%$.