Thick accretion disks with super-Eddington luminosities

Abstract

We describe a Newtonian version of the theory of thick accretion disks orbiting black holes. In view of the present inadequate knowledge of microscopic viscosity process, this theory adopts a macroscopic approach. All the uncertainties are absorbed in currently arbitrary functions lambda(xi) and f(xi) which describe the (non-Keplerian) angular momentum along the disk, and the outgoing radiation flux in units of the critical flux. Assuming surface distributions of angular momentum and radiation flux, one can construct a model of a thick, non-Keplerian accretion disk with no knowledge of the viscosity mechanism. Thick accretion disks can have luminosities 100 times above the Eddington limit. We study the self-consistency constraints for the theory of thick accretion disks with super-Eddington luminosities.