Dynamical, thermal and viscous processes
The accretion discs physics is governed by a
non-linear combination of many processes, including gravity,
hydrodynamics, viscosity, radiation and magnetic fields. According to a
semi-analytic understanding of these processes developed over the past
thirty years, the high angular momentum of matter is gradually removed
by viscous stresses and transported outwards. This allows matter in the
accretion disc to gradually spiral down towards the gravity center, with
its gravitational energy degraded to heat. A fraction of the heat
converts into radiation, which partially escapes and cools down the accretion disc.
Accretion disc physics is often described in terms of dynamical,
thermal and viscous processes that occur at different timescales  ,  ,  :
- Dynamical processes occur with the timescale
(a time in which pressure force adjusts to combined gravitational and centrifugal forces).
- Thermal processes occur with the timescale
(a time in which the entropy redistribution occurs due to dissipative heating and cooling processes (in particular radiation).
- Viscous processes occur with the timescale
(a time in which angular momentum distribution changes due to torque caused by dissipative stresses).
In most analytic models it is assumed that  , and in the thin disc analytic models it is assumed that  . Although neither these inequalities, nor even the very existence of the separate timescals  ,  ,  ,
could be considered as well established facts (indeed some of the
supercomputer simulations of accretion seem to challenge that), the
present understanding of the accretion disc physics --- both in general
and in details --- is based (explicitly or implicitly) on this
separation into dynamical, thermal and viscous processes.
Dynamical processes, with the timescale 
Dynamical equilibria of accretion flows are governed by the balance of four forces: gravitational  , centrifugal  , pressure  , and magnetic  . In particular, accretion discs, are characterized by a significant contribution of  . Thus, in accretion discs the angular momentum of matter is high (and therefore dynamically important  )
in contrast to another important type of accretion flows --- the
quasi-spherical "Bondi" accretion, where the angular momentum is
everywhere smaller than the Keplerian (and therefore dynamically
unimportant,  ). Some authors take this difference as a defining condition: in
an "accretion disc" there must be an extended region where the matter's
angular momentum is not smaller than the Keplerian angular momentum in
the same region. This is illustrated in Figure 6.
Most of the accretion discs types (except
proto-planetary and GRB ones) have a negligible self-gravity: the
external gravity of the central accreting object dominates. The external
gravity is important in shaping several crucial aspects of the internal
physics of accretion discs, including their characteristic frequencies
(that are connected to several important timescales) and their size
(inner and outer radius). The most fundamental gravity's characteristic
frequencies are the Keplerian orbital frequency  , the radial epicyclic frequency  , and the vertical epicyclic frequency  .
They are directly relevant for motion of free particles and also play a
role for determining equilibria and stability of rotating fluids. In
both Newton's and Einstein's gravity the three frequencies are derived
from the effective potential  , and given by the same formulae,
where is the specific angular momentum, and derivatives are taken at the symmetry plane . Small (epicyclic) oscillations around the circular orbit , are governed by , , with solutions , , which are unstable when or . In Newton's gravity . A spherical Newtonian body has the gravitational potential . Thus, in this case, , i.e. all slightly non-circular orbits are closed and all circular orbits are stable.
In Einstein's gravity, for a spherical body, it is , i.e. non-circular orbits are not closed. In addition, for circular orbits with radii smaller than , it is , which indicates the dynamical instability of these orbits. We describe this and other aspects of the black hole gravity that are most relevant to the accretion disc physics in sub-section 2.1 The black hole gravity of this Scholarpedia article.
Paczynski and Wiita (1980) realized that by a proper guess of an artificial Newtonian gravitational potential,  (with  ),
one may accurately describe in Newton's theory the relativistic orbital
motion, and in particular the existence of ISCO. Paczynski's model for
the black hole gravity became a very popular tool in the accretion disc
research. It is used by numerous authors in both analytic and numerical
studies. Effects of special relativity have been added to Paczynski's
model by Abramowicz et al.(1996), and a generalization to a rotating black hole was done by e.g. Karas and Semerak (1999). Newtonian models for rotating black holes are cumbersome and for this reason not widely used, see Abramowicz (2009).
Viscous processes, with the timescale 
Despite the fact that the crucial role of accretion power in quasars
and other astrophysical objects was uncovered already forty years ago by
Salpeter and Zeldovich, several important aspects of the very nature of
accretion discs are still puzzling. One of them is the origin of the
viscous stresses. Balbus and Hawley recognized in 1991 that, most
probably, viscosity is provided by turbulence, which originates from the
magneto-rotational instability. The instability develops when the
matter in the accretion disc rotates non-rigidly in a weak magnetic
field. There is still no consensus on how strong the resulting viscous
stresses are and how exactly they shape the flow patterns in accretion
discs. A great part of our detailed theoretical knowledge on the role of
this source of turbulence in accretion disc physics comes from
numerical supercomputer simulations. The simulations are rather
difficult, time consuming, and hardware demanding. Due to mathematical
difficulties, in analytic models one does not directly implement a
(small scale) magnetohydrodynamical description, but describes the
turbulence (or rather the action of a small scale viscosity of an
unspecified nature) by a phenomenological "alpha-viscosity prescription"
introduced by Shakura and Sunyaev: the kinematic viscosity coefficient
is assumed to have the form
,
where  const is a free parameter,  is a lenght scale (usually the pressure scale), and 
is a characteristic speed (usually the sound speed). There are several
versions of this prescription, the most often used assumes that the
viscous torque  is proportional to a pressure (either the total, or the gas pressure). The rate of viscous dissipation of energy is

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There is a disagreement between experts on the
viscosity prescription issue: some argue that only the hydromagnetic
approach is physically legitimate and the alpha prescription is
physically meaningless, while others stress that at present the
magnetohydrodynamical simulations have not yet sufficiently maturated to
be trusted, and that the models that use the alpha prescription capture
more relevant physics. All the detailed comparisons between theoretical
predictions and observations performed to date were based on the alpha
prescription.
Thermal processes, with the timescale 
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