Spectral energy distribution of super-Eddington flows

Spectral properties of super-Eddington accretion flows are investigated by means of a parallel line-of-sight calculation. The subjacent model, taken from two-dimensional radiation hydrodynamic simulations by Ohsuga et al. (2005), consists of a disc accretion region and an extended atmosphere with high velocity outflows. The non-gray radiative transfer equation is solved, including relativistic effects, by applying the FLD approximation. The calculated spectrum is composed of a thermal, blackbody-like emission from the disc which depends sensitively on the inclination angle, and of high energy X-ray and gamma-ray emission from the atmosphere. We find mild beaming effects in the thermal radiation for small inclination angles. If we compare the face-on case with the edge-on case, the average photon energy is larger by a factor of ~1.7 due mainly to Doppler boosting, while the photon number density is larger by a factor of ~3.7 due mainly to anisotropic matter distribution around the central black hole. This gives an explanation for the observed X-ray temperatures of ULXs which are too high to be explained in the framework of intermediate-mass black holes. While the main features of the thermal spectral component are consistent with more detailed calculations of slim accretion discs, the atmosphere induces major changes in the high-energy part, which cannot be reproduced by existing models. In order to interpret observational data properly, simple approaches like the Eddington-Barbier approximation cannot be applied.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

Chemical evolution of turbulent protoplanetary disks and the Solar nebula

This is the second paper in a series where we study the influence of transport processes on the chemical evolution of protoplanetary disks. Our analysis is based on a flared alpha-model of the DM Tau system, coupled to a large gas-grain chemical network. To account for production of complex molecules, the chemical network is supplied with an extended set of surface reactions and photo-processes in ice mantles. Our disk model covers a wide range of radii, 10-800 AU (from a Jovian planet-forming zone to the outer disk edge). Turbulent transport of gases and ices is implicitly modeled in full 2D along with the time-dependent chemistry. Two regimes are considered, with high and low efficiency of turbulent mixing. The results of the chemical model with suppressed turbulent diffusion are close to those from the laminar model, but not completely. A simple analysis for the laminar chemical model to highlight potential sensitivity of a molecule to transport processes is performed. It is shown that the higher the ratio of the characteristic chemical timescale to the turbulent transport timescale for a given molecule, the higher the probability that its column density will be affected by diffusion. We find that turbulent transport enhances abundances and column densities of many gas-phase species and ices, particularly, complex ones. For such species a chemical steady-state is not reached due to long timescales associated with evaporation and surface photoprocessing and recombination. In contrast, simple radicals and molecular ions, which chemical evolution is fast and proceeds solely in the gas phase, are not much affected by dynamics. All molecules are divided into three groups according to the sensitivity of their column densities to the turbulent diffusion. [Abridged]Comment: 42 pages, 13 figures, 16 tables, accepted for publication in ApJS

The composition of the protosolar disk and the formation conditions for comets

Conditions in the protosolar nebula have left their mark in the composition of cometary volatiles, thought to be some of the most pristine material in the solar system. Cometary compositions represent the end point of processing that began in the parent molecular cloud core and continued through the collapse of that core to form the protosun and the solar nebula, and finally during the evolution of the solar nebula itself as the cometary bodies were accreting. Disentangling the effects of the various epochs on the final composition of a comet is complicated. But comets are not the only source of information about the solar nebula. Protostellar disks around young stars similar to the protosun provide a way of investigating the evolution of disks similar to the solar nebula while they are in the process of evolving to form their own solar systems. In this way we can learn about the physical and chemical conditions under which comets formed, and about the types of dynamical processing that shaped the solar system we see today. This paper summarizes some recent contributions to our understanding of both cometary volatiles and the composition, structure and evolution of protostellar disks.Comment: To appear in Space Science Reviews. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11214-015-0167-

Chemistry in a gravitationally unstable protoplanetary disc

Until now, axisymmetric, alpha-disc models have been adopted for calculations of the chemical composition of protoplanetary discs. While this approach is reasonable for many discs, it is not appropriate when self-gravity is important. In this case, spiral waves and shocks cause temperature and density variations that affect the chemistry. We have adopted a dynamical model of a solar-mass star surrounded by a massive (0.39 Msun), self-gravitating disc, similar to those that may be found around Class 0 and early Class I protostars, in a study of disc chemistry. We find that for each of a number of species, e.g. H2O, adsorption and desorption dominate the changes in the gas-phase fractional abundance; because the desorption rates are very sensitive to temperature, maps of the emissions from such species should reveal the locations of shocks of varying strengths. The gas-phase fractional abundances of some other species, e.g. CS, are also affected by gas-phase reactions, particularly in warm shocked regions. We conclude that the dynamics of massive discs have a strong impact on how they appear when imaged in the emission lines of various molecular species.Comment: 10 figures and 3 tables, accepted for publication in MNRA

Towards convection-resolving, global atmospheric simulations with the Model for Prediction Across Scales (MPAS): an extreme scaling experiment

The Model for Prediction Across Scales (MPAS) is a novel set of earth-system simulation components and consists of an atmospheric model, an ocean model and a land-ice model. Its distinct features are the use of unstructured Voronoi meshes and C-grid discretisation to address shortcomings of global models on regular grids and of limited area models nested in a forcing data set, with respect to parallel scalability, numerical accuracy and physical consistency. This makes MPAS a promising tool for conducting climate-related impact studies of, for example, land use changes in a consistent approach. Here, we present an in-depth evaluation of MPAS with regards to technical aspects of performing model runs and scalability for three medium-size meshes on four different High Performance Computing sites with different architectures and compilers. We uncover model limitations and identify new aspects for the model optimisation that are introduced by the use of unstructured Voronoi meshes. We further demonstrate the model performance of MPAS in terms of its capability to reproduce the dynamics of the West African Monsoon and its associated precipitation. Comparing 11 month runs for two meshes with observations and a Weather Research & Forecasting tool (WRF) reference model, we show that MPAS can reproduce the atmospheric dynamics on global and local scales, but that further optimisation is required to address a precipitation excess for this region. Finally, we conduct extreme scaling tests on a global 3 km mesh with more than 65 million horizontal grid cells on up to half a million cores. We discuss necessary modifications of the model code to improve its parallel performance in general and specific to the HPC environment. We confirm good scaling (70 % parallel efficiency or better) of the MPAS model and provide numbers on the computational requirements for experiments with the 3 km mesh. In doing so, we show that global, convection-resolving atmospheric simulations with MPAS are within reach of current and next generations of high-end computing facilities