Numerical Simulations of the Thermal Instability Collapse in Radiation Pressure Dominated Disks

We show that accretion disks, both in the subcritical and supercritical accretion rate regime, may exhibit significant amplitude luminosity oscillations. The luminosity time behavior has been obtained by performing a set of time‐dependent 2D SPH simulations of accretion disks with different values of α and accretion rate. An explanation of this luminosity behavior is proposed in terms of limit‐cycle instability: the disk oscillates between a radiation pressure dominated configuration (with a high luminosity value) and a gas pressure dominated one (with a low luminosity value). The origin of this instability is the difference between the heat produced by viscosity and the energy emitted as radiation from the disk surface (the well‐known thermal instability mechanism). We support this hypothesis showing that the limit‐cycle behavior produces a sequence of collapsing and refilling states of the innermost disk region.