Overview
- Researchers from the Institute for Advanced Study and the Flatiron Institute published the work on December 3, 2025 in The Astrophysical Journal as the first paper in a planned series.
- The models target stellar-mass black holes and captured radiation-dominated turbulent disks, powerful winds, and occasional jets.
- Computed spectra from the simulations closely matched observations across systems such as ultraluminous X-ray sources and X-ray binaries.
- The method employs an angle-dependent radiation algorithm in full general relativity, designed by Christopher White, implemented by Patrick Mullen in the AthenaK code, and built on Yan-Fei Jiang’s prior work.
- Large-scale runs on the Frontier and Aurora supercomputers made the calculations possible, and the results support testing the idea that some JWST “little red dots” could be super-Eddington accretors.