Exploring Black Hole Accretion Through Multidimensional Simulations

Abstract Our ability to electromagnetically detect and characterize astrophysical black holes depends crucially on their accretion of gas. We used the Eulerian grid codes FLASH, Athena, and Athena++ to perform fluid dynamic simulations, studying black hole accretion. Our findings demonstrate that, in viscous conditions, all three codes produce similar accretion rates, while, in non-viscous conditions, Athena++ appears to generate much smaller accretion rates. Nevertheless, our results give insight on the purely numerical variability of black hole accretion.