Talk Title: SUPER-EDDINGTON ACCRETION
Abstract: Quasars and other sources (e.g. ULXs) provide a convincing observational evidence for a stable super-Eddington black hole accretion. Theory predicts that strongly super-Eddington accretion flows form thick tori with a pair of narrow funnels along the rotating axis. Black hole relativistic gravity causes the super-Eddington tori to be marginally locked inside their "relativistic Roche lobes" i.e. particular equipotentials that self-cross along the cusp-shaped inner edge of the torus. A small overflow of the Roche lobe regulates accretion rate near the black hole, and the location of the inner edge regulates the efficiency of accretion, which is much smaller than the standard ~10%. Radiation inside the funnels is collimated into narrow, highly super-Eddington beams. Thermal, viscous, and Papaloizou-Pringle modes of thick disks global hydrodynamical oscillations are stabilized by the small (but dynamical) mass accretion loss caused by the Roche lobe overflow. Little is known about MHD instabilities, convection, radiative transfer, radiative instabilities, and a possible role of global outflows and magnetic fields. Almost nothing is known about outer boundary conditions. All these effects may be rather important in determining details of the super-Eddington accretion physics.
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