Self-gravitating accretion disks

We consider a class of fully self-gravitating accretion disks, for which efficient cooling mechanisms are assumed to maintain the disk close to the margin of Jeans stability. For such self-regulated disks the equations become very simple in the outer regions, where the angular momentum convective transport approximately balances the viscous transport. These latter equations have been shown [G. Bertin, Astrophys. J.478, L71 (1997)] to lead naturally to a self similar solution with flat rotation curve, with circular velocity proportional to (M)(1/3) and fixed opening angle. Here we report on a recent extensive investigation TG. Bertin and [G. Lodato, Astron. Astrophys. 350, 694 (1999)] of the general properties of self-regulated accretion disks.