You are invited to our next Physics and Astronomy Colloquia event taking place on Tuesday, November 16, 2021, from 12:10 - 1 PM in CNS 206/208. At this seminar, we will be joined by Megan Smith from Hamilton College.
Presenter: Megan Smith from Hamilton College
Title: The Effect of the Magnetic Rayleigh-Taylor Instability in Thin Black Hole Accretion Disks
Abstract: One of the big questions in our understanding of black hole-accretion disks systems is how matter from the disk falls onto the black hole, since angular momentum conservation should keep that matter in orbit. Due to observations of intense radiation around black holes caused by infalling matter, we know accretion happens, so there must be turbulence leading to angular momentum transport. In accretion disks with large-scale ordered magnetic fields, one possible source of this turbulence is the magnetic RayleighTaylor (mRT) instability. The effects of this instability are frequently seen in the thin magnetically dominated accretion disk simulation I study and I will share how they affect the accretion rate of the system and the relevance of the mRT instability to angular momentum transport.
