# Lense-Thirring precession of accretion disks around compact objects

## 1. INTRODUCTION

Tilted orbits about a rotating object experience a torque due to the general relativistic Lense-Thirring effect (Lense & Thirring 1918), which causes the plane of the orbit to precess. For a fluid accretion disk, the differential precession with radius causes stresses and dissipation. If the torque is strong enough compared to the internal viscous forces, the result is that the inner regions of the disk are forced to align with the spin of the central neutron star or black hole (Bardeen & Petterson 1975).

This process has several important effects. If the angular momentum of disk material at large radius is misaligned with respect to the rotation axis of the central object, then alignment of the inner regions by the Bardeen-Petterson effect implies that the disk must possess a large-scale warped or twisted shape. It is then obvious that this will both modify the emergent spectrum, and determine the direction of jets accelerated from the inner disk region. The consequences of this for disks and jets in Active Galactic Nuclei are well known, and have been discussed for some time (Bardeen & Petterson 1975; Rees 1978; Scheuer & Feiler 1996; Natarajan & Pringle 1998; Natarajan & Armitage 1999).

More recently, it has been suggested that Lense-Thirring precession may be directly observable in the form of Quasi-Periodic Oscillations (QPOs) in the X-ray lightcurves of low-mass X-ray binaries (Stella & Vietri 1998), including galactic black hole candidates (Cui, Zhang & Chen 1998). If confirmed, this identification promises to provide constraints on the equation of state of material at nuclear densities, and on the spin parameter of stellar mass black holes. It would also constitute one of the few arenas where the Lense-Thirring effect might be detectable – the measurement of this precession for orbits around the Earth (Ciufolini et al. 1998) is, itself, controversial. However, other explanations for the observed QPOs remain viable. For neutron stars especially, the possibilities for interaction between the disk and a magnetosphere are legion, and in general remain poorly understood (see e.g. Miller & Stone 1997; Spruit & Taam 1993; Ghosh & Lamb 1979). There are also other relativistic effects possible for purely flat, fluid disks around black holes, which can produce oscillations with frequencies in the right range (e.g. Nowak et al. 1997).

Estimates of the frequency of Lense-Thirring precession for parameters appropriate to neutron stars are, at least to an order of magnitude, in agreement with the observed frequencies of some QPOs (Stella & Vietri 1998). The main theoretical uncertainty in applying the model is then the damping rate of perturbations excited in the inner disk. This was computed by Markovic & Lamb (1998), who considered the global modes of the disk described by the linearized version of the twisted disk evolution equations. They found that the combination of differential precession and disk viscosity was generally highly deleterious to the survival of warps in the disk. The damping rates they obtained were sufficiently rapid as to cast serious doubt on the Lense-Thirring interpretation of QPOs, although some relatively weakly damped modes were found when the torques from radiation were also included. In response, Vietri & Stella (1998) suggested that damping of vertical motions might be much weaker than that assumed by Markovic & Lamb (1998), due either to a radically modified disk structure, or a supposed more general suppression of damping in the inner, aligned portions of the disk.

In this paper, we compute numerically the response of a viscous disk to finite amplitude perturbations in the innermost regions where the Lense-Thirring torque is strong. Following Markovic & Lamb (1998), we employ the equations derived by Papaloizou & Pringle (1983) that describe the hydrodynamic response of a thin, viscous disk that evolves essentially diffusively. Our approach is to commence with a steady, flat disk, perturb the inner disk impulsively to generate a warp, and then evolve the full twisted disk equations to follow the warp as it precesses and decays. We compare our results both with the linear evolution investigated previously, and with the evolution in a Paczynski-Wiita (1980) potential that models some of the non-Newtonian effects expected close to neutron stars and black holes.

The outline of the paper is as follows. We set out the equations solved in $`\mathrm{\S }`$2, and estimate the parameters appropriate for accretion disks in X-ray binaries. In $`\mathrm{\S }3`$ we present results from a grid of models with varying viscosity laws, potentials, and approximations to the twist equation. $`\mathrm{\S }`$4 summarizes our conclusions.

## 2. EVOLUTION EQUATIONS FOR A TWISTED DISK

The evolution of a geometrically thin, warped accretion disk in the diffusive regime can be described using the equations developed by Papaloizou & Pringle (1983). In terms of the angular momentum density of the disk $`𝐋(R,t)`$, the governing equation is (Pringle 1992),

$`{\displaystyle \frac{𝐋}{t}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{R}}{\displaystyle \frac{}{R}}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{(/R)[\nu _1\mathrm{\Sigma }R^3(\mathrm{\Omega }^{^{}})]}{\mathrm{\Sigma }(/R)(R^2\mathrm{\Omega })}}𝐋\right]`$ (1)   
$`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{R}}{\displaystyle \frac{}{R}}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\nu _2R|𝐋|{\displaystyle \frac{𝐥}{R}}\right]`$   
$`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{R}}{\displaystyle \frac{}{R}}\left\{\left[{\displaystyle \frac{\frac{1}{2}\nu _2R^3\mathrm{\Omega }|𝐥/R|^2}{(/R)(R^2\mathrm{\Omega })}}+\nu _1\left({\displaystyle \frac{R\mathrm{\Omega }^{^{}}}{\mathrm{\Omega }}}\right)\right]𝐋\right\}`$   
$`+`$ $`𝛀_𝐩\times 𝐋.`$   
Here $`𝐋=(GM)^{1/2}\mathrm{\Sigma }R^{1/2}\widehat{l}`$, $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is the surface density, and $`\stackrel{}{l}`$ is a unit vector normal to the disk surface. The angular velocity in the disk at radius $`R`$ is $`\mathrm{\Omega }(R)`$, and $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{^{}}\mathrm{d}\mathrm{\Omega }/\mathrm{d}R`$. We consider Keplerian orbits in two possible forms for the potential, a Newtonian point mass potential,

$$\psi =\frac{GM}{R}$$
(2)   
and a pseudo-Newtonian potential (Paczynski & Wiita 1980),

$$\psi =\frac{GM}{RR_g}$$
(3)   
where $`R_g=2GM/c^2`$. The latter potential reproduces correctly some features of orbits around compact objects – for example the existence and location of an innermost stable orbit – though we include it here mainly to gauge the sensitivity of equation (1) to changes in the angular velocity profile. $`\nu _1`$ and $`\nu _2`$ are “viscosities” corresponding to the azimuthal and vertical shear respectively, and the last term on the right hand side of the equation is the Lense-Thirring torque. For a black hole with angular momentum $`𝐉`$, for example, $`𝛀_𝐩=\omega _𝐩/R^3=2𝐉G/c^2R^3`$. We note that this fundamentally Newtonian approach is appropriate only for black holes with modest values of the spin parameter. In particular, the behavior of disks around rapidly rotating, Kerr black holes, is formally not addressed by these calculations. Although there are no direct measurements of black hole spins, observations are suggestive of a broad range of spin parameters for black holes in X-ray binaries (Zhang, Cui & Chen 1997).

Equation (1) represents a vast simplification to the general equations for the time dependent evolution of a warped accretion disk, which in general require a full hydrodynamic treatment (see e.g. the simulations of Larwood et al. 1996). The conditions under which equation (1) is valid have been investigated in detail (Papaloizou & Pringle 1983; Papaloizou & Lin 1994; Ogilvie 1999), with the result that diffusive evolution is likely to apply to thin disks in Active Galactic Nuclei and, probably, X-ray binaries (Pringle 1999), which are the systems of interest here. Conversely wave-like evolution is likely to dominate for disks around young stars.

Equation (1) can be derived either from consideration of mass and angular momentum conservation of two neighboring annuli in the disk sharing their angular momentum via viscosity (Papaloizou & Pringle 1983; Pringle 1992), or via a hydrodynamic treatment of the warped disk valid in the linear regime (Papaloizou & Pringle 1983). More recent analysis (Ogilvie 1999) has shown that an equation of this type is valid even for strongly warped disks, though, in general, neither $`\nu _1`$ nor $`\nu _2`$ so defined are equal to the usual kinematic viscosity $`\nu `$ of the Navier-Stokes equation and planar disk theory. In fact, the relation between these quantities for an arbitrary warp is extremely complex (Ogilvie 1999). For this paper, we will take the ratio of $`\nu _1`$ to $`\nu _2`$ to be a free parameter, and examine the influence of this choice on the decay of warps in the inner disk. Clearly, models with low $`\nu _2`$ viscosity are the most favorable for sustaining observable precession of the inner disk regions.

There are two relevant timescales in this problem, the precession time and the viscous timescale corresponding to the vertical shear, which we define as,

$$t_{\mathrm{prec}}\frac{2\pi }{|𝛀_𝐩(R)|}t_{\nu _2}\frac{R^2}{\nu _2(R)}.$$
(4)   
The balance between these timescales determines whether the Bardeen-Petterson effect is able to align the inner disk with the spin of the central object. Roughly speaking, this will occur if $`t_{\mathrm{prec}}t_{\nu _2}`$ at $`R=R_{\mathrm{in}}`$ (Kumar & Pringle 1985; Scheuer & Feiler 1996; Natarajan & Armitage 1999).

This ratio of timescales, $`t_{\mathrm{prec}}/t_{\nu _2}`$, can be estimated as follows. For definiteness, we assume that the disk surrounds a black hole with spin parameter $`a`$, for which

$$\omega _p=2ac\left(\frac{GM}{c^2}\right)^2,$$
(5)   
and the corresponding precession timescale is,

$$t_{\mathrm{prec}}=\frac{\pi R^3}{2ac}\left(\frac{c^2}{GM}\right)^2.$$
(6)   
If the $`\nu _1`$ disk viscosity is parameterized via the Shakura-Sunyaev (1973) prescription, $`\nu _1=\alpha c_s^2/\mathrm{\Omega }`$, where $`\alpha `$ is a dimensionless parameter and $`c_s`$ is the local sound speed, then $`t_{\nu _1}=R^2/\nu _1`$ is given by,

$$t_{\nu _1}=\frac{1}{\alpha \mathrm{\Omega }}\left(\frac{R}{H}\right)^2,$$
(7)   
where $`H`$ is the disk scale height. We then have,

$$\frac{t_{\mathrm{prec}}}{t_{\nu _1}}10^2\left(\frac{\alpha }{0.01}\right)\left(\frac{a}{0.5}\right)^1\left(\frac{R}{3R_g}\right)^{3/2}\left(\frac{H/R}{0.1}\right)^2$$
(8)   
where we have adopted rough estimates for $`\alpha `$ and $`H/R`$. Obviously, there are large variations possible in all of these parameters, for example reducing $`H/R`$ to $`10^2`$ would decrease $`t_{\mathrm{prec}}/t_{\nu _1}`$ by two orders of magnitude. However, if $`\nu _2\nu _1`$, then this simple estimate suggests that the precessional timescale in the inner disk is likely to be perhaps two or three orders of magnitude shorter than the local viscous timescale. Accordingly, we choose parameters for our calculations that match this regime, and the a priori more favorable one (for observing disk precession) where the viscosity, and hence the damping of warps, is weaker.

We solve equation (1) using the explicit finite difference method described by Pringle (1992), with zero torque boundary conditions at $`R_{\mathrm{in}}`$ and $`R_{\mathrm{out}}`$. The outer boundary condition is applied at a radius large enough as to not affect the inner disk evolution over the time period of interest. Typically, $`R_{\mathrm{out}}/R_{\mathrm{in}}=16`$ suffices. Moderately high numerical resolution is needed to resolve the strongly twisted disk configurations that develop, we use 400 to 800 grid points logarithmically spaced between $`R_{\mathrm{in}}`$ and $`R_{\mathrm{out}}`$. Tests show that this resolution is more than adequate.

For our calculations we adopt units in which $`R_{\mathrm{in}}=1`$, and $`|\mathrm{\Omega }_p(R_{\mathrm{in}})|=8`$. We take the viscosities to be power laws in radius, $`\nu _1=\nu _{10}R^\delta `$, $`\nu _2=\nu _{20}R^\delta `$, and consider cases where $`\nu _{20}/\nu _{10}=5,1,0.2`$. We consider an initially aligned, planar disk, apply a simple warp perturbation to the inclination,

$$\mathrm{\Delta }i=\mathrm{\Delta }i_0\mathrm{exp}^{(RR_\mathrm{p})^2/\mathrm{\Delta }R_\mathrm{p}^2},$$
(9)   
and follow the perturbed disk as the warp decays and precesses. We note that this form of perturbation, in which there is initially no twist in the disk warp, generally decays slower than a twisted configuration for which the radial scale on which components of $`\stackrel{}{l}`$ change is smaller.

These initial conditions are appropriate if the outer accretion disk is aligned with the equatorial plane of the spinning black hole. Alternatively, the outer disk could be misaligned, either as a consequence of warping instabilities (Pringle 1996; Maloney & Begelman 1997; Schandl & Meyer 1994), or because the black hole retains an initially misaligned angular momentum vector (King & Kolb 1999). However, even in these cases, we expect that the inner disk will be aligned with the spin of the hole by the Bardeen-Petterson (1975) effect. For standard models of the disk viscosity, this alignment radius is large compared to the region of the disk from which QPOs are expected to originate. This conclusion is reasonably robust, at least for steady disks, since it follows simply from the relative timescale for precession versus viscous evolution. Furthermore, we show later that models in which alignment would not occur (those with relatively large values of the disk viscosity), are those in which perturbations damp most rapidly.

## 3. RESULTS

### 3.1. Newtonian point mass potential

Fig. 1 shows the decay of a warp in the inner regions of the disk. The parameters of the initial perturbation were: $`R_\mathrm{p}=2`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }R_\mathrm{p}=0.2`$, and $`\mathrm{\Delta }i_0=0.1`$. The azimuthal angle of the ascending node, $`\gamma `$, was initially constant with radius, i.e. the initial state had no twist. The time slices are plotted at intervals of $`\mathrm{\Delta }t=5`$, which is a little less than the precession time, $`t_{\mathrm{prec}}=2\pi `$, at $`R_\mathrm{p}`$. The disk viscosity was taken to be $`\nu _1=\nu _2=10^2R^{3/2}`$, which gives $`t_{\mathrm{prec}}/t_{\nu _2}=4\times 10^2`$.

From the Figure, it can be seen that the warp decays rapidly, with the peak inclination decaying by roughly an order of magnitude per precession time. As it does so, the warp diffuses radially, and the differential precession with radius induces a strong twist in the disk shape. This is shown in Fig. 2, which plots the shape of the disk at the instant when the perturbation is applied and after a time $`\mathrm{\Delta }t=15`$, around two precession timescales later. The warp becomes increasingly twisted with time, which reduces the characteristic radial lengthscales for variations in $`\stackrel{}{l}`$, and thereby shortens the timescale ($`\mathrm{\Delta }R^2/\nu _2`$) required for diffusion to flatten the disk.

Fig. 3 shows the temporal behavior of the warp for a grid of disk models with varying assumed forms for the viscosity. We consider viscosity laws with $`\delta =3/2`$ and $`\delta =0`$, for a range of $`\nu _{10}`$ and $`\nu _{20}`$.

For the cases where the viscosity is weak (i.e. low $`\nu _{20}`$), the decay of the warp depends almost exclusively on the value of $`\nu _2`$ for the range of $`\nu _1`$ considered here. The initial rate of decay is found to be proportional to $`\nu _2^1`$, but this phase lasts for at most a few precession times. Subsequently, the disk inclination is found to decline more rapidly with time, so that at the end of the runs the rate of decay $`\mathrm{d}\mathrm{log}i/\mathrm{d}t`$ is similar for the various choices of $`\nu _2`$. The runs with differing $`\delta `$ are very similar, the main distinction being the trivial one that the $`\delta =0`$ calculations have lower viscosity at $`R=R_\mathrm{p}`$ due to our choice of normalization. Thus, the decay rates are correspondingly lower.

Our strongest viscosity runs show some dependence of the damping rate on $`\nu _1`$ as well as $`\nu _2`$. The model with large $`\nu _1/\nu _2`$ exhibits substantially faster decay. This is due to the larger radial velocity advecting the perturbation inwards, which causes a more rapid decline in the inclination at the fixed radius $`R_\mathrm{p}`$.

### 3.2. Precession rate

Fig. 4 shows the precession rate, $`\mathrm{d}\gamma /\mathrm{d}t`$, for the annulus at $`R=2`$ in the $`\delta =3/2`$ models. The Lense-Thirring precession rate at this radius for our choice of units corresponds to $`(\mathrm{d}\gamma /\mathrm{d}t)=1`$, and this is the initial rate of precession for the warped disk in all the models. Thereafter, the precession rate declines as the increasingly twisted disk generates internal viscous torques that oppose further distortion of the disk shape, with the decay rate of the precession varying with $`\nu _2`$ in the same manner as the disk inclination. Comparing Figs. 3 and 4, we find that the precession of the disk annulus remains within 10% of its initial value up to the epoch when the disk inclination has decayed by roughly an order of magnitude. For all the models considered here this is a short timespan, of the order of a few precession periods.

Converting these results to a prediction of the coherence (or lack thereof) of a Lense-Thirring feature in the power spectrum of X-ray binaries would require detailed knowledge of the emission mechanisms producing the X-ray flux, which is generally lacking. However, it is clear that for the models considered here, the perturbed disk is able to maintain a coherent precessional motion, at a fixed radius, for at most a few precession periods. This might be sufficient to generate weakly coherent oscillations in the disk emissivity (and some of the observed QPOs are indeed of this type), but would be unable to lead to oscillations with a high quality factor. Moreover, this estimate most probably overstates the coherence of the X-ray signal, since any plausible emission mechanism will sample a range of radii which will have different precession frequencies.

### 3.3. Comparison with linearized equations

It is of interest to compare our results with the comprehensive analysis of the linearized twist equations, including Lense-Thirring precession, presented by Markovic & Lamb (1998). For small warp amplitudes, where $`\beta 1`$ and $`R\beta ^{^{}}1`$ (here $`\beta `$ is the local angle of tilt), the surface density of the disk remains a fixed function of radius, and the warp can be completely described by two components of the local tilt vector, $`l_x`$ and $`l_y`$. This simplifies equation (1) significantly, and the resulting equation can be expressed in terms of a single complex quantity $`W=\beta e^{i\gamma }`$. For $`\nu _2R^{3/2}`$ the evolution of $`W`$ is described by,

$$\frac{W}{t}=\frac{\omega _p}{R^3}iW+\frac{\nu _{20}}{2}\frac{}{R}\left(R^{3/2}\frac{W}{R}\right).$$
(10)   
Markovic & Lamb (1998) proceeded to solve for the modes of this equation, and the corresponding equation including terms representing radiative torques. For our purposes of comparing results with the previous calculations, we instead solve equation (10) as an initial value problem with the initial conditions defined by equation (9). This can straightforwardly be done using identical methods to those employed for the full evolution equation.

Figure 5 shows the comparison between the disk evolution computed with equations (1) and (10). Two choices of viscosity are used, the $`\delta =3/2`$, $`\nu _{10}=\nu _{20}=10^2`$ model discussed already, and a model where the viscous time is an order of magnitude longer. Considering this second case first, for these parameters, where $`t_{\mathrm{prec}}t_\nu `$, the decay of the warp is essentially identical between the two calculations, both in the rate and the detailed warp shape. This regime is the only one where there is some possibility of precession surviving for long enough to be potentially observable, and for warps of this (relatively modest) amplitude we therefore conclude that the linear approach provides an excellent approximation to the evolution described by equation (1). For the model where $`t_{\mathrm{prec}}`$ and $`t_\nu `$ are more comparable (the upper panel in Fig. 5), there are some differences between the detailed shape of the warp in the two calculations. These are due to changes in the surface density of the inner disk in response to the warp, which are ignored in the linear treatment. Even in this case though the decay rates are found to be very similar, and there is certainly no evidence that including the extra terms in equation (1) can cause significantly slower decay than is obtained in the linear regime.

### 3.4. Paczynski-Wiita potential

A rather analogous situation to the preceeding Section is found for the comparison between the Newtonian point mass and Paczynski-Wiita potentials. Figure 6 shows the evolution of disk inclination as a function of radius for the two potentials, using the same parameters as for Fig. 1. There are significant differences between the shape of the warp in the two calculations. At late times the warp in a Paczynski-Wiita potential sustains a higher amplitude at the inner disk edge than in the Newtonian case, and in principle this would be more favorable for producing an observable signal of disk precession. This is attributable to the lower surface density (and correspondingly more rapid radial inflow for a given disk viscosity) at small radii in the non-Newtonian potential. However, the damping rates for the two calculations differ only to a qualitatively insignificant degree – for this choice of parameters both warps decay extremely rapidly. Moreover, for less viscous disks, where the warps decay more slowly, the differences between the evolution in the two potentials quickly become much smaller.

### 3.5. Radiation induced warping

In the preceeding discussion, we have investigated the damping rates of warps in disks whose evolution is driven solely by induced precession and internal disk viscosity. The influence of radiation forces caused by re-emission of radiation from a central source of luminosity is known to lead to growing warping modes of the disk (Pringle 1996) in some circumstances, so it is of interest to consider how they may alter the evolution of the inner disk. The first point to note is that the large scale warping modes discussed by Maloney, Begelman & Pringle (1996; see also Maloney & Begelman 1997; Maloney, Begelman & Nowak 1998; Wijers & Pringle 1999) are probably irrelevant to the discussion. These modes grow and precess on timescales that are of the order of the viscous timescale of the outer edge of the disk, typically tens to hundreds of days for X-ray binaries. The most promising circumstances for observing Lense-Thirring precession require $`t_{\mathrm{prec}}t_{\nu _2}`$ in the inner disk, in which case any outer warp will be flattened into the equatorial plane well outside the innermost regions. However, the low surface density of the inner regions, if they remain optically thick, allow for the possibility that radiation reaction forces could play an additional significant role there. Indeed, consideration of the linearized twist equations, including the radiative torque (Markovic & Lamb 1998), suggests that the decay rate of some twisted disk modes could be substantially reduced over the case where radiation is neglected.

Although highly suggestive, we feel that the influence of radiation reaction forces on the survival of inner disk precession is likely to be considerably more subtle, owing primarily to the importance of shadowing. Shadowing of parts of the outer disk by twists at smaller radii is an inherently non-linear effect that provides additional coupling between different radii in the disk. For a disk illuminated by a point source at the origin, it modifies the growth rate even for negligible disk inclinations, where the linear approximation would otherwise be extremely accurate. We have found that the sense of the modification is typically to reduce the growth rate for disks that are subject to radiation warping at large radius, and we anticipate that there would be equally significant effects for the much more tightly wound modes present at small radii when the effects of Lense-Thirring precession are included. Additionally, at radii of just a few $`R_g`$, the assumption of a central illuminating point source (which is an excellent approximation for the usual radiation driven modes at very large disk radii) breaks down, and the real radiation field is likely to be much more complex. It is unclear to what degree these effects alter the damping rates computed by Markovic & Lamb (1998), but clearly further investigation in this area is merited.

## 4. DISCUSSION

In this paper, we have presented results from a time-dependent treatment of the evolution of perturbations in the inner regions of accretion disks which are aligned with the spin axis of the accretor by the Bardeen-Petterson effect. We find that such perturbations decay rapidly. For a weak viscosity (one for which the viscous timescale corresponding to $`\nu _2`$ is much greater than the local precession timescale), the inner parts of the disk would be expected to be accurately aligned with the rotation axis. An impulsively generated warp then decays at a rate that depends solely on the viscosity acting on the $`(R,z)`$ stress, conventionally parameterized as $`\nu _2`$ (Papaloizou & Pringle 1983). The initial damping rate is proportional to $`\nu _2`$, but after a few precession periods the damping is greatly enhanced as a consequence of the strong differential precession and twisting of the disk shape. This twisting rapidly reduces the radial lengthscale over which disk viscosity must act in order to flatten the disk into the equatorial plane, and leads to rapid damping.

Our calculations are based on a numerical treatment of the full twisted disk equations derived by Papaloizou & Pringle (1983), which can readily be extended to arbitrary rotation laws (Pringle 1992). We have compared the evolution of warps in potentials arising from a Newtonian point mass, and a Paczynski-Wiita potential that mimics some features of hydrodynamics in a Schwarzschild metric. For disk parameters chosen such that warps are at least relatively long lived, we find that the decay rate of warps in these two potentials are very similar, and accurately described by a linearized treatment of the twisted disk equations. Disks where the inflow velocity is larger exhibit some qualitative differences, both between the two potentials and when compared to the linear results, but these disks show even faster damping than expected on the basis of the value of $`\nu _2`$ alone. They are not favorable cases for producing long lived, observable, precession. Advection dominated flows (e.g. Narayan & Yi 1994), where the radial inflow velocity is typically a significant fraction of the orbital velocity, would be extreme examples of this effect. Such disks seem even less likely to be able to support coherent Lense-Thirring precession.

These calculations, and those of Markovic & Lamb (1998), assume that the accreting material in the vicinity of the black hole can be treated as a fluid accretion disk. This would be wrong if the inner disk was prone to breaking into blobs, for example via the development of the Lightman-Eardley (1974) or other instabilities (e.g. Ghosh 1998). Several authors have suggested that the inner disk in X-ray binaries is, indeed, susceptible to such instabilities (e.g. Taam & Lin 1984; Lasota & Pelat 1991; Cannizzo 1996). The behavior of accreting gas in such a model could be very different from that considered here, and is beyond the scope of this paper. Further study of such instabilities, in the context of currently favored magnetohydrodynamic models for the origin of the disk viscosity, would be valuable.

The strength of the viscosity in planar accretion disks is constrained, albeit poorly, by a variety of observational methods (see e.g. Cannizzo, Chen & Livio 1995). By contrast, there are essentially no constraints whatsoever on how efficiently a disk can damp warp, especially at the small radii that are of relevance to Lense-Thirring precession (at large radii weak constraints are possible from observing which systems may be prone to radiation induced warping). This introduces a major uncertainty in any attempt to apply the results to interpreting the possible origins of QPOs in X-ray binaries. However, if $`\nu _1\nu _2`$, it seems clear that warps in the inner disk are damped on a timescale of the order of a single precession period, or less. This is the same result as was found by Markovic & Lamb (1998) from a linear analysis, and it suggests that precession is unlikely to be the origin of low-frequency QPOs in disks around neutron stars and galactic black hole candidate sources. The important caveat is that we know of no definite reason, either from observational constraints or from theoretical arguments, why $`\nu _2`$ might not be very much smaller that $`\nu _1`$ in the inner disk. In this regime, differential precession still leads to strong twisting and eventual rapid decay of the warp. However, our lowest $`\nu _2`$ runs maintain a reasonable warp amplitude for $`10`$ precession periods, along with a roughly constant precession rate. This could lead to at least weakly coherent signals that have as their origin Lense-Thirring precession. Better theoretical understanding of the hydrodynamics of disk warps will be needed to investigate this possibility. Recent work (Ogilvie 1999) has made progress towards this goal.

We thank Jim Pringle for making available his numerical disk evolution code, Gordon Ogilvie for sharing results in advance of publication, and the referee Wei Cui for a prompt and very helpful report.