Accretion disk around a Schwarzschild black hole in asymptotic safety

Abstract

We study quantum gravity effects on radiation properties of thin accretion disks around a renormalization group improved (RGI-) Schwarzschild black hole. In the infrared (IR) limit of the asymptotically safe theory with higher derivatives, the running Newton coupling G(r) depends on a free parameter which encodes the quantum effects on the spacetime geometry. By varying this parameter, modifications to thermal properties of the disk as the time averaged energy flux, the disk temperature, the differential luminosity, and the conversion efficiency of accreting mass into radiation, are obtained. In addition to a shifting of the radius of the innermost stable circular orbit (ISCO) toward small values, we find an increase of the maximum values of these thermal properties and a greater efficiency than in the classical relativistic regime. We discuss astrophysical applications of these results by using observational data of the stellar-mass black hole candidate LMC X-3. Our findings could, in principle, be used to identify quantum gravity effects through astrophysical observations.