• Corpus ID: 16136631

A Note on Hydrodynamic Viscosity and Selfgravitation in Accretion Disks

@article{Duschl2000ANO,
  title={A Note on Hydrodynamic Viscosity and Selfgravitation in Accretion Disks},
  author={Wolfgang J. Duschl and Peter A. Strittmatter and Peter L. Biermann Institut fur Theoretische Astrophysik and Heidelberg and H Germany and Steward Observatory and The University of Arizona and Tucson and Az and Usa and Max--Planck--Institut fur Radioastronomie and Bonn},
  journal={Astronomy and Astrophysics},
  year={2000},
  volume={357},
  pages={1123-1132}
}

• W. Duschl, P. Strittmatter, +9 authors Bonn
• Published 6 April 2000
• Physics
• Astronomy and Astrophysics

We propose a generalized accretion disk viscosity prescription based on hydrodynamically driven turbulence at the critical effective Reynolds number. This approach is con- sistent with recent re-analysis by Richard & Zahn (1999) of experimental results on turbulent Couette-Taylor flows. This new -viscosity formulation is applied to both selfgravitating and non-selfgravitating disks and is shown to yield the stan- dard -disk prescription in the case of shock dissipation limited, non-selfgravitating disks. A specific case of fully selfgravitat- ing -disks is analyzed. We suggest that such disks may explain the observed spectra of protoplanetary disks and yield a natural explanation for the radial motions inferred from the observed metallicity gradients in disk galaxies. The -mechanism may also account for the rapid mass transport required to power ul- tra luminous infrared galaxies.