An Etymological Dictionary of Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. A type of → accretion flow by a → compact object such as a → black hole that consists of cool → optically thick gas and has a relatively high mass → accretion rate, in contrast to → hot accretion flows.
   

2. Gas accreting from the → intergalactic medium (IGM) onto → galactic haloes with sufficiently low velocities so that it will not be shocked to the → virial temperature of the halo, but will instead flow at a relatively low temperature
   (T ~ 10⁴ K).

Galaxies grow by accreting gas from → cosmic filaments. Feedback from star formation and → active galactic nuclei returns a significant fraction of the → interstellar medium (ISM) to the halo and may even blow it out of the halo into the IGM. This “cold accretion” will happen if the cooling time of → virialized gas is too short to maintain a hot, → hydrostatic halo. The existence of such a cold accretion mode has been confirmed by simulations, which have furthermore demonstrated that cold mode accretion can also be important for halos sufficiently massive to contain hot, hydrostatic gas. Because gas accretes preferentially along the filaments of the cosmic web, the streams of infalling gas have relatively high gas densities and correspondingly low cooling times. This allows the cold streams to penetrate the hot, hydrostatic halos surrounding massive galaxies, particularly at → high redshifts (F. van de Voort et al., 2012, MNRAS 421, 2809).

See also: → cold; → accretion; → flow.