Abstract
In the accretion flow of a fluid, its velocity may transit from subsonic to supersonic. The point at which such a transition occurs is called the sonic point and is often mathematically special. We consider the steady-state and spherically symmetric accretion problem of an ideal photon gas in general static spherically symmetric spacetimes, neglecting backreaction. Our main result is that the equation of state (EOS) of an ideal photon gas leads to a correspondence between its sonic point and the photon sphere of the spacetime in general situations. Moreover, we also show that in spite of the dependence of the EOS on the dimension of spacetime, this correspondence holds for spacetimes of arbitrary dimensions.
- Received 28 January 2016
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.94.044053
© 2016 American Physical Society