Thermal Instability and Evaporation of Accretion Disc Atmospheres

Abstract

We investigate the thermal stability of the outer layers of accretion discs in which the local viscous energy dissipation rate scales with the pressure as for standard Shakura-Sunyaev discs. By solving for the accretion disc vertical structure using the grey two-stream approximation, we show that the thermal structure of the optically thin outer layers is in first approximation independent from radiative transfer effects. We then calculate this thermal structure using the detailed photoionisation code MAPPINGS, including the effects of an external radiation field from the centre of the accretion flow. We apply our method to cataclysmic variable (CV), and stellar mass black hole discs. We find that in the case of CV's, the mass evaporation rate from the disc due to the thermal instability is not likely to be significant compared to the mass flow through the disc. In the case of black hole discs, the very strong irradiation can drive significant evaporation if the mas accretion rate is low, less than 10^16 g/sec.