Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics Confronts Theory: Formation of Standing Shocks in Accretion Disks and Winds Around Black Holes

Abstract

We present results of numerical simulation of thin accretion disks and winds. We use the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) technique for this purpose. We show that the simulation agrees very well with the recent theoretical work on the shock formation. The most significant conclusion is that shocks in an inviscid flow are extremely stable. For the first time, our work also removes the ambiguity in terms of the location and stability of shocks in adiabatic flows.