Thick accretion discs: The role of self-gravity

The authors present some preliminary results concerning the structure of self-gravitating accretion discs. Self-gravity is introduced in a fully self-consistent way and the resulting equations are solved numerically using the self-consistent field method. The main results are the possibility of solutions which do not exist when self-gravity is neglected, the possibility of accretion in a purely newtonian potential and a limitation on the size of the discs imposed by self-gravity