Relativistic Parker winds with variable effective polytropic index

¹ Observatoire de Paris, L.U.Th., 5 place Jules Janssen, 92190 Meudon, France e-mail: zakaria.meliani@obspm.fr
² Université de Paris 7, APC, 2 place Jussieu, 75005 Paris, France
³ IASA and Section of Astrophysics, Astronomy & Mechanics, Department of Physics, University of Athens, Panepistimiopolis 157 84, Zografos, Greece

Received: 10 November 2003
Accepted: 23 June 2004

Abstract

Spherically symmetric hydrodynamical outflows accelerated thermally in the vicinity of a compact object are studied by generalizing an equation of state with a variable effective polytropic index, appropriate to describe relativistic temperatures close to the central object and nonrelativistic ones further away. Relativistic effects introduced by the Schwarzschild metric and the presence of relativistic temperatures in the corona are compared with previous results for a constant effective polytropic index and also with results of the classical wind theory. By a parametric study of the polytropic index and the location of the sonic transition it is found that space time curvature and relativistic temperatures tend to increase the efficiency of thermal driving in accelerating the outflow. Thus conversely to the classical Parker wind, the outflow is accelerated even for polytropic indices higher than . The results of this simple but fully relativistic extension of the polytropic equation of state may be useful in simulations of outflows from hot coronae in black hole magnetospheres.