Disc Winds From Accreting Systems in the 2040s

TL;DR

Disc winds regulate accretion and feedback across scales from white dwarfs to active galactic nuclei, with blue-shifted absorption revealing a likely common launching origin. The paper surveys the multi-phase, cross-mass-scale wind phenomenology driven by thermal, radiative, and magneto-centrifugal processes, while highlighting gaps due to winds' transient nature and limited time-domain coverage. It outlines a 2040s vision in which time-domain, high-resolution spectroscopy across optical, near-infrared, X-ray, and sub-millimeter bands—coupled with multi-messenger observations—will constrain launching radii, mass, energy, and angular-momentum budgets, enabling population-wide scaling relations. These advances are expected to integrate disc-scale physics into binary evolution models and galaxy feedback prescriptions, linking microphysical accretion processes to large-scale evolution.

Abstract

What does the temporal evolution of disc winds tell us about accreting systems and the accretion process? Studies of accretion-disc outflows across all mass scales, including accreting white dwarfs, X-ray binaries, and active galactic nuclei, have shown that winds play a key role in regulating both the accretion flow and the surrounding environment. Disc winds therefore provide a common thread linking a broad range of scientific topics, from the microphysics of accretion to galaxy-scale feedback and evolution, as well as binary evolution and the predicted rates of energetic (multi-messenger) transient phenomena. Yet we still lack a comprehensive picture of the accretion-feedback process. Optical spectroscopy has revealed striking similarities across mass scales, hinting at common production mechanisms, and has shown that winds can evolve on timescales of only minutes. Progress, however, has been limited by their transient nature, sparse time coverage, and the lack of simultaneous, high-resolution spectroscopy. Time-domain facilities with high temporal and spectral resolution will allow us to track these events in high accretion-rate systems, constrain their launching mechanisms, and measure the mass, energy, and angular momentum they carry. This will provide crucial input for binary evolution models, wind feedback, and a unified view of accreting systems across mass scales.