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P. Subramanian, P.A. Becker (George Mason U.)
Advection dominated accretion flows have been recently proposed as attractive models for explaining low luminosity black hole systems. However, the so-called ADAF models suffer from a serious drawback; namely, the accretion flow has a postive Bernoulli parameter, and is therefore gravitationally unbound. Blandford & Begelman (1999, MNRAS) recently proposed advection-dominated flows that incorporate an outflow that carries away an appreciable amount of mass, energy and angular momentum (ADIOS), thereby alleviating this problem. However, their solutions merely assume the existence of such outflows, and do not elaborate on the mechanisms that could drive them. Subramanian, Becker & Kazanas (1999, ApJ, astro-ph/9805044) have described a mechanism whereby particles are accelerated via collisions with magnetic scattering centers (kinks in the tangled magnetic field) embedded in the accreting plasma and form relativistic outflows. We examine the role of this mechanism in the context of Blandford & Begelman's ADIOS solutions with a view to elucidating the physical processes that drive the outflows, which in turn are a crucial component of the overall solution.
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