Nozzle Shocks, Disk Tearing and Streamers Drive Rapid Accretion in 3D GRMHD Simulations of Warped Thin Disks

Understand

The angular momentum of gas feeding a black hole (BH) is typically misaligned with respect to the BH spin, resulting in a tilted accretion disk.

• Rotation of the BH drags the surrounding space-time, manifesting as Lense-Thirring torques that lead to disk precession and warping.
• We study these processes by simulating a thin ($H/r=0.02$), highly tilted ($\mathcal{T}=65^\circ$) accretion disk around a rapidly rotating ($a=0.9375$) BH at extremely high resolutions, which we performed using the general-relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) code H-AMR.
• The disk becomes significantly warped and continuously tears into two individually precessing sub-disks.