Outbursts of Irradiated Accretion Discs

Abstract

I solve analytically the viscous evolution of a self-irradiated accretion disc, as seen during outbursts of soft X-ray transients. The solutions predict steep power-law X-ray decays L_X \sim (1+ t/t_visc)^{-4}, changing to L_X \sim (1-t/t'_visc)^4 at late times, where t_visc, t'_visc are viscous timescales. These forms closely resemble the approximate exponential and linear decays inferred by King and Ritter (1997) in these two regimes. The decays are much steeper than for unirradiated discs because the viscosity is a function of the central accretion rate rather than of local conditions in the disc.