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Neutron stars inspiralling into a stellar envelope can accrete at rates vastly exceeding the Eddington limit if the flow develops pressures high enough to allow neutrinos to radiate the released gravitational energy. It has been suggested…
The association of long-duration gamma-ray bursts (LGRBs) with Type Ic supernovae presents a challenge to supernova explosion models. In the collapsar model for LGRBs, gamma rays are produced in an ultrarelativistic jet launching from the…
The nature of ultraluminous X-ray sources in nearby galaxies is one of the major open questions in modern X-ray astrophysics. One possible explanation for these objects is an inhomogeneous, radiation dominated accretion disk around a $\sim…
We consider accretion onto newborn black holes following the collapse of rotating massive stellar cores, at the threshold where a centrifugally supported disk gives way to nearly radial inflow for low angular momentum. For realistic initial…
A neutrino-dominated accretion disk around a stellar-mass black hole (BH) can power a gamma-ray burst (GRB) via annihilation of neutrinos launched from the disk. For the BH hyperaccretion system, high accretion rate should trigger the…
The X-ray spectra of accreting stellar-mass black hole systems exhibit spectral features due to reflection, especially broad iron K alpha emission lines. We investigate the reflection by the accretion disc that can be expected in the…
The origin of Ultraluminous X-ray Sources (ULXs) in external galaxies whose X-ray luminosities exceed those of the brightest black holes in our Galaxy by hundreds and thousands of times is mysterious. The most popular models for the ULXs…
Luminous accreting stellar mass and supermassive black holes produce power-law continuum X-ray emission from a compact central corona. Reverberation time lags occur due to light travel time-delays between changes in the direct coronal…
Supermassive black holes are now realized to exist in the centers of most galaxies. The recent discoveries of luminous quasars at redshifts higher than 6 require that these black holes were assembled already when the Universe was less than…
Massive primordial halos exposed to moderate UV backgrounds are the potential birthplaces of supermassive black holes. In such a halo, an initially isothermal collapse will occur, leading to high accretion rates of…
Ultra-luminous Compact X-ray Sources (ULXs) in nearby spiral galaxies and Galactic superluminal jet sources share the common spectral characteristic that they have unusually high disk temperatures which cannot be explained in the framework…
We investigate mass ejection from accretion disks formed during the collapse of rapidly-rotating Wolf-Rayet stars. The neutrino-cooled, black hole (BH) accretion disk system that forms at the center of the star -- and the ensuing outflows…
Accretion onto supermassive black holes produces both the dramatic phenomena associated with active galactic nuclei and the underwhelming displays seen in the Galactic Center and most other nearby galaxies. I review selected aspects of the…
Relativistic reflection features are commonly observed in the X-ray spectra of stellar-mass and supermassive black holes and originate from illumination of the inner part of the accretion disk by a hot corona. All the available relativistic…
Short gamma-ray bursts (sGRBs) show a large diversity in their properties. This suggests that the observed phenomenon can be caused by different "central engines" or that the engine produces a variety of outcomes depending on its…
We propose a scenario in which massive stars form at the outer edges of an AGN accretion disc. We analyze the dynamics of a disc forming around a supermassive black hole, in which the angular momentum is transported by turbulence induced by…
Rapid, hyper-Eddington accretion is likely to power the central engines of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). In the extreme conditions of densities and temperatures the accreting torus is cooled by neutrino emission rather than by radiation. Another…
Keplerian accretion discs around massive black holes (MBHs) are gravitationally unstable beyond a few hundredths of parsec and should collapse to form stars. Indeed an accretion/star formation episode took place a few millions years ago in…
Disks of gas accreting onto supermassive black holes may host numerous stellar-mass objects, formed within the disk or captured from a nuclear star cluster. We present a simplified model of stellar evolution applicable to these dense…
We review observations of ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs). X-ray spectroscopic and timing studies of ULXs suggest a new accretion state distinct from those seen in Galactic stellar-mass black hole binaries. The detection of coherent…