Maximal efficiency of geometric beaming and polarization of highly super-Eddington X-ray sources
Abstract
Geometric beaming is an often invoked explanation for the apparent super-Eddington luminosities of ultraluminous X-ray sources. It is a natural consequence of the geometrically thick envelope that is expected to surround the inner accretion disk in the super-Eddington accretion regime; as the radiation can only freely escape through a narrow funnel-shaped cavity, the flux along the funnel axis is enhanced. A fraction of the photons will nevertheless escape the funnel cavity at larger angles, reducing the effectiveness of the beaming. To explore the limits of geometric beaming, we performed Monte Carlo simulations of conservative radiative transfer in an infinitely optically thick funnel while accounting for polarization. We discovered that the beaming becomes inefficient when the funnel opening angle is small (≲15∘) because the photons tend to remain trapped within the cavity until they reach the upper edge of the funnel where they can escape at larger angles. For most of the photons to escape a narrow funnel through a small solid angle, the funnel has to be unrealistically long. Consequently, geometric beaming could at most boost the apparent luminosity by a factor of a few dozen in our idealized simulations. While larger boost factors on the order of ∼100 are possible for funnels with a length of ≳105 Schwarzschild radii, this requires very narrow opening angles of ≲3∘. Additionally, we found that aberration due to mildly relativistic velocities does not significantly change this result. The maximal polarization degree of light reflected by the funnel remained on the order of a few percent for face-on sources and ≲10% for edge-on sources.
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BibTeX
@misc{ahlberg2026maximal,
title = {{Maximal efficiency of geometric beaming and polarization of highly super-Eddington X-ray sources}},
author = {Varpu Ahlberg and Alexandra Veledina and Eugene Churazov and Ildar Khabibullin},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.23089},
eprint = {2610.23089},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.23089},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Maximal efficiency of geometric beaming and polarization of highly super-Eddington X-ray sources
AU - Varpu Ahlberg
AU - Alexandra Veledina
AU - Eugene Churazov
AU - Ildar Khabibullin
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/16
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.23089
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.23089
AB - Geometric beaming is an often invoked explanation for the apparent super-Eddington luminosities of ultraluminous X-ray sources. It is a natural consequence of the geometrically thick envelope that is expected to surround the inner accretion disk in the super-Eddington accretion regime; as the radiation can only freely escape through a narrow funnel-shaped cavity, the flux along the funnel axis is enhanced. A fraction of the photons will nevertheless escape the funnel cavity at larger angles, reducing the effectiveness of the beaming. To explore the limits of geometric beaming, we performed Monte Carlo simulations of conservative radiative transfer in an infinitely optically thick funnel while accounting for polarization. We discovered that the beaming becomes inefficient when the funnel opening angle is small (≲15^∘) because the photons tend to remain trapped within the cavity until they reach the upper edge of the funnel where they can escape at larger angles. For most of the photons to escape a narrow funnel through a small solid angle, the funnel has to be unrealistically long. Consequently, geometric beaming could at most boost the apparent luminosity by a factor of a few dozen in our idealized simulations. While larger boost factors on the order of ∼100 are possible for funnels with a length of ≳10^5 Schwarzschild radii, this requires very narrow opening angles of ≲3^∘. Additionally, we found that aberration due to mildly relativistic velocities does not significantly change this result. The maximal polarization degree of light reflected by the funnel remained on the order of a few percent for face-on sources and ≲10% for edge-on sources.
ER -