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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 May 2016
The model of a bimodal accretion disk, which consists of an Shakura-Sunyaev disk (SSD) as the outer part and an advection-dominated accretion flow (ADAF) as the inner part, has been quite successfully applied to many black hole X-ray binaries. However, the precise physical mechanism through which such a transition occurs remains a matter of debate. We review briefly SSD-ADAF transition mechanisms presented in the literature, and offer a proposal that in the case of moderately strong viscosity, the thermal instability of a radiation pressure-supported SSD can trigger the transition.