Astrophysics and Relativity Seminars, Physics | AS

November 18, 2025 Tuesday 2:00 PM +
726 Broadway, 940, CCPP Seminar
Astrophysics and Relativity Seminars (astro)

Adrian Liu
McGill University

TBA

December 2, 2025 Tuesday 2:00 PM +
726 Broadway, 940, CCPP Seminar
Astrophysics and Relativity Seminars (astro)

Chris Fragile
College of Charleston

What Are We Learning About Super-Eddington Accretion Disks From Simulations?

Accretion of gas onto gravitationally compact objects (black holes specifically) is one of the most important processes acting to shape our Universe. At extremely high rates of accretion (dubbed `super-Eddington'), the huge amount of liberated energy in the form of radiation, results in the accretion disk becoming geometrically thick, with mass lost via winds. Understanding this super-Eddington regime of accretion is vital to explaining the challenging observation that supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are fully formed at redshifts >7. It is also important to understanding astrophysical events and objects such as tidal disruption events (TDEs) and ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs). While we are able to perform observations of super-Eddington accreting systems, to understand them theoretically and make any progress, we must turn to numerical studies, as the interplay between strong radiation fields and the dynamics of magnetized fluids cannot be solved analytically, except under very restrictive assumptions. In this talk, I will present the results of some recent super-Eddington disk simulations and discuss some of the interesting things we are learning.

January 20, 2026 Tuesday 2:00 PM +
726 Broadway, 940, CCPP Seminar
Astrophysics and Relativity Seminars (astro)

Wolfgang Kerzendorf
Michigan State University

TBD

January 27, 2026 Tuesday 2:00 PM +
726 Broadway, 940, CCPP Seminar
Astrophysics and Relativity Seminars (astro)

Jeff Hazboun
Oregon State University

TBA

February 3, 2026 Tuesday 2:00 PM +
726 Broadway, 940, CCPP Seminar
Astrophysics and Relativity Seminars (astro)

Max Isi
Flatiron Institute

TBD

February 10, 2026 Tuesday 2:00 PM +
726 Broadway, 940, CCPP Seminar
Astrophysics and Relativity Seminars (astro)

Nicholas Rui
Princeton University

TBA

March 3, 2026 Tuesday 2:00 PM +
726 Broadway, 940, CCPP Seminar
Astrophysics and Relativity Seminars (astro)

Nadine Soliman
California Institute of Technology

TBD

March 10, 2026 Tuesday 2:00 PM +
726 Broadway, 940, CCPP Seminar
Astrophysics and Relativity Seminars (astro)

Neal Dalal
Perimeter Institute

TBA

March 24, 2026 Tuesday 2:00 PM +
726 Broadway, 940, CCPP Seminar
Astrophysics and Relativity Seminars (astro)

Yanqin Wu
University of Toronto

TBD

March 31, 2026 Tuesday 2:00 PM +
726 Broadway, 940, CCPP Seminar
Astrophysics and Relativity Seminars (astro)

Nicolas Fernandez Gonzalez
Rutgers University

TBA

April 7, 2026 Tuesday 2:00 PM +
726 Broadway, 940, CCPP Seminar
Astrophysics and Relativity Seminars (astro)

Anna-Christina Eilers
MIT

TBD!

April 14, 2026 Tuesday 2:00 PM +
726 Broadway, 940, CCPP Seminar
Astrophysics and Relativity Seminars (astro)

Andrei M. Beloborodov
Columbia University

TBD

April 21, 2026 Tuesday 2:00 PM +
726 Broadway, 940, CCPP Seminar
Astrophysics and Relativity Seminars (astro)

Charlie Conroy
Harvard University

TBD!

April 28, 2026 Tuesday 2:00 PM +
726 Broadway, 940, CCPP Seminar
Astrophysics and Relativity Seminars (astro)

Kelsey Lund
UC Berkeley

TBD