Ja. Font et Jm. Ibanez, NON-AXISYMMETRICAL RELATIVISTIC BONDI-HOYLE ACCRETION ON TO A SCHWARZSCHILD BLACK-HOLE, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 298(3), 1998, pp. 835-846
We present the results of an exhaustive numerical study of fully relat
ivistic non-axisymmetric Bondi-Hoyle accretion on to a moving Schwarzs
child black hole. We have solved the equations of general relativistic
hydrodynamics with a high-resolution shock-capturing numerical scheme
based on a linearized Riemann solver. The numerical code was previous
ly used to study axisymmetric flow configurations past a Schwarzschild
black hole. We have analysed and discussed the flow morphology for a
sample of asymptotically high Mach number models. The results of this
work reveal that initially asymptotic uniform flows always accrete on
to the hole in a stationary way, which closely resembles the previous
axisymmetric patterns. This is in contrast with some Newtonian numeric
al studies where violent flip-flop instabilities were found. As discus
sed in the text, the reason can be found in the initial conditions use
d in the relativistic regime, as they cannot exactly duplicate the pre
vious Newtonian setups where the instability appeared. The dependence
of the final solution on the inner boundary condition as well as on th
e grid resolution has also been studied. Finally, we have computed the
accretion rates of mass and linear and angular momentum.