The nature of tilted supercritical accretion discs

Abstract

In this paper, we report on the first 3D general relativistic radiation magnetohydrodynamic simulations of large supercritical accretion discs that are tilted with respect to the black hole spin axis. We explore a range of black hole spin parameters (from (Formula presented) to 0.9), initial tilts (in the range from (Formula presented) to (Formula presented) ), and target mass accretion rates. We first confirm that, for all the untilted simulations, the Eddington accretion limit is obeyed ((Formula presented) ), consistent with our previous findings. However, for tilted discs we find that the mass accretion rate can be enhanced by up to a factor of 10 and that factor depends linearly on tilt (Formula presented). This could be an important aspect in solving the puzzle of the growth of the first supermassive black holes. We also find that for a given tilt, the mass accretion rate enhancement is proportional to the magnitude of the spin. Additionally, we find that tilted supercritical accretion discs are more advective than their untilted counterparts. We attribute all of these differences to the presence of standing shocks in the inner regions of the accretion flow, a feature unique to tilted discs. © The Author(s) 2026. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society.