The Early History of Microquasar Research
Abstract
Microquasars are compact objects (stellar-mass black holes and neutron stars) that mimic, on a smaller scale, many of the phenomena seen in quasars. Their discovery provided new insights into the physics of relativistic jets observed elsewhere in the universe, and the accretion--jet coupling. Microquasars are opening new horizons for the understanding of ultraluminous X-ray sources observed in external galaxies, gamma-ray bursts of long duration, and the origin of stellar black holes and neutron stars. Microquasars are one of the best laboratories to probe General Relativity in the limit of the strongest gravitational fields, and as such, have become an area of topical interest for both high energy physics and astrophysics.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1206.1041,
title = {The Early History of Microquasar Research},
author = {I. F. Mirabel},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1206.1041},
year = {2012}
}
Comments
14 pages, 7 figures. Short version of a course at the XIVth Brazilian School of Cosmology and Gravitation; Chapter 6 in: Cosmology and Gravitation: XIVth Brazilian School of Cosmology and Gravitation, edited by M.Novello and S.E.Perez Bergliaffa, Cambridge Scientific Publishers, 2011