We discuss a special case of formation of axisymmetric shocks in the
accretion flow of ideal gas onto a Schwarzschild black hole: when the total
energy of the flow is negative. The result of our analysis enlarges the
parameter space for which these steady shocks are exhibited in the accretion of
gas rotating around relativistic stellar objects. Since keplerian disks have
negative total energy, we guess that, in this energy range, the production of
the shock phenomenon might be easier than in the case of positive energy. So
our outcome reinforces the view that sub-keplerian flows of matter may
significantly affect the physics of the high energy radiation emission from
black hole candidates. We give a simple procedure to obtain analytically the
position of the shocks. The comparison of the analytical results with the data
of 1D and 2D axisymmetric numerical simulations confirms that the shocks form
and are stable.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, accepted by MNRAS on 10 November 200