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"Foundations of Black Hole Accretion Disk Theory"
Marek A. Abramowicz and P. Chris Fragile 
Abstract
1 Introduction
2 Three Destinations in Kerr’s Strong Gravity
2.1 The event horizon
2.2 The ergosphere
2.3 ISCO: the orbit of marginal stability
2.4 The Paczyński–Wiita potential
2.5 Summary: characteristic radii and frequencies
3 Matter Description: General Principles
3.1 The fluid part
3.2 The stress part
3.3 The Maxwell part
3.4 The radiation part
4 Thick Disks, Polish Doughnuts, & Magnetized Tori
4.1 Polish doughnuts
4.2 Magnetized Tori
5 Thin Disks
5.1 Equations in the Kerr geometry
5.2 The eigenvalue problem
5.3 Solutions: Shakura–Sunyaev & Novikov–Thorne
6 Slim Disks
7 Advection-Dominated Accretion Flows (ADAFs)
8 Stability
8.1 Hydrodynamic stability
8.2 Magneto-rotational instability (MRI)
8.3 Thermal and viscous instability
9 Oscillations
9.1 Dynamical oscillations of thick disks
9.2 Diskoseismology: oscillations of thin disks
10 Relativistic Jets
11 Numerical Simulations
11.1 Numerical techniques
11.2 Matter description in simulations
11.3 Polish doughnuts (thick) disks in simulations
11.4 Novikov–Thorne (thin) disks in simulations
11.5 ADAFs in simulations
11.6 Oscillations in simulations
11.7 Jets in simulations
11.8 Highly magnetized accretion in simulations
12 Selected Astrophysical Applications
12.1 Measurements of black-hole mass and spin
12.2 Black hole vs. neutron star accretion disks
12.3 Black-hole accretion disk spectral states
12.4 Quasi-Periodic Oscillations (QPOs)
12.5 The case of Sgr A*
13 Concluding Remarks
Acknowledgements
References
Footnotes
Figures
Tables
Figure 14
Figure 14: Pseudo-color plots of log(T ) with contours of logρ from four different general relativistic MHD simulations. The simulations all begin with the same initial conditions, but have different energy conservation and cooling treatments: The upper-left panel conserves internal energy and ignores cooling; the upper-right panel conserves internal energy and includes cooling; the lower-left panel conserves total energy and ignores cooling; the lower-right panel conserves total energy and includes cooling. The very different end states illustrate the importance of properly capturing thermodynamic processes. Image reproduced by permission from [101], copyright by AAS.

Marek A. Abramowicz and P. Chris Fragile, "Foundations of Black Hole Accretion Disk Theory",
Living Rev. Relativity, 16 (2013), 1, doi:10.12942/lrr-2013-1, URL (accessed <date>): http://www.livingreviews.org/lrr-2013-1.
Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. © The author(s), except where otherwise noted.