English

A formation scenario of black hole-envelope systems --viscous hydrodynamics simulation in general relativity--

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2026-05-26 v1 Astrophysics of Galaxies

Abstract

By performing a viscous hydrodynamics simulation in general relativity for super-Eddington accretion flows onto massive black holes of mass M=105M=10^5--107M10^7M_\odot, we discuss a formation scenario for black hole-envelope systems. We consider the mass accretion rate of a3/G1.5×1025(a/10kms1)3a^3/G \approx 1.5 \times 10^{25} (a/10\,\mathrm{km\,s^{-1}})^3\,g/s, comparable to the Eddington mass accretion rate of a 107M10^7M_\odot black hole, assuming that the gas temperature of the infalling matter is 104\lesssim 10^4\,K. Here, aa and GG denote the sound speed and gravitational constant. For the accretion flow, we set up a quasi-spherical Bondi-type flow in which radial inflow dominates over angular momentum in the distant region. It is found that (i) for low-mass black holes with M106MM \lesssim 10^6M_\odot, a photon-trapped region forms in the inner region, and a significant viscous outflow driven near the polar region overcomes the ram pressure of the mass inflow, leading to an inflow-outflow structure; (ii) for massive black holes of M3×106MM \gtrsim 3 \times 10^6M_\odot, the outflow is not launched, and a convective envelope around the black hole gradually develops; and (iii) irrespective of the black-hole mass, the mass accretion rate onto the black hole is of order 10\% of the Eddington accretion rate for reasonable values of the viscous coefficient. As the mass accretion rate onto the black holes is much lower than the mass growth rate of the envelope for low-mass black holes with M106MM\lesssim 10^6M_\odot, the envelope mass is likely to increase until the total viscous heating rate exceeds the Eddington luminosity of the system, if the mass accretion rate is preserved to be high for 108(M/107M)\gtrsim 10^8 (M/10^7M_\odot)\,yrs.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2605.24087,
  title  = {A formation scenario of black hole-envelope systems --viscous hydrodynamics simulation in general relativity--},
  author = {Alan Tsz Lok Lam and Masaru Shibata and Kenta Hotokezaka and Carlo Musolino},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.24087},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

13 pages, 10 figures