Related papers: The Case for Massive, Evolving Winds in Black Hole…
The spin of a black hole retains the memory of how the black hole grew, and can be a potent source of energy for powering relativistic jets. To understand the diagnostic power and astrophysical significance of black hole spin, however, we…
Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients are obviously related to persistent Supergiant X-ray Binaries. Any convincing explanation for their behaviour must consistently take into account all types of X-ray sources powered by wind accretion. Here we…
We review the properties of 40 X-ray binaries that contain either a confirmed black hole or a black hole candidate. After discussing briefly the significance of these Galactic black holes to both astronomy and physics, we present basic data…
The conventional accretion disk lore is that magnetized turbulence is the principal angular momentum transport process that drives accretion. However, when dynamically important large-scale magnetic fields thread an accretion disk, they can…
Relativistic Fe K emission lines from accretion disks and from disk winds encode key information about black holes, and their accretion and feedback mechanisms. We show that these two processes can in principle produce indistinguishable…
Black hole accretion disks appear to produce invariably plasma outflows that result in blue-shifted absorption features in their spectra. The X-ray absorption-line properties of these outflows are quite diverse, ranging in velocity from…
The accretion flow in the disk dominated state of black hole binaries has peak temperature and luminosity which vary together in such a way as to indicate an approximately constant emitting area. The association of this with the last stable…
We show that black holes accreting at or above the Eddington rate probably produce winds which are optically thick in the continuum, whether in quasars or X-ray binaries. The photospheric radius and outflow speed are proportional to \mo^2…
We studied the relation of accretion-jet power and disk luminosity, especially the jet efficiencies and disk radiative efficiencies for different accretion disks as well as black hole (BH) spin, in order to explore the origin of radio…
Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are extreme X-ray binaries shining above 10^39 erg/s, in most cases as a consequence of super-Eddington accretion onto neutron stars and stellar-mass black holes accreting above their Eddington limit. This…
A tight correlation between the radio and X-ray emission in the hard state of black hole X-ray binaries (BHXRBs) indicates an intrinsic disc-jet connection in stellar black hole accretion systems, though the detailed physics processes at…
We report on a 120 ks Chandra/HETG spectrum of the black hole GRS 1915+105. The observation was made during an extended and bright soft state in June, 2015. An extremely rich disk wind absorption spectrum is detected, similar to that…
Cygnus X-1 is one of the brightest X-ray sources observed and shows the X-ray intensity variations on time scales from milliseconds to months in both the soft and hard X-rays. The accretion onto the black hole is believed to be wind fed due…
In this paper we study the wind accretion onto a rotating black hole in the close binary system harboring a young massive star. It is shown that the angular momentum of the accreted stellar wind material is not sufficient for the formation…
The properties of X-ray emission from accreting black holes are reviewed. The contemporary observational picture and current status of theoretical understanding of accretion and formation of X-ray radiation in the vicinity of the compact…
The absence of thermal instability in the high/soft state of black hole X-ray binaries, in disagreement with the standard thin disk theory, is a long-standing riddle for theoretical astronomers. We have tried to resolve this question by…
Black hole binaries show equatorial disc winds at high luminosities, which apparently disappear during the spectral transition to the low/hard state. This is also where the radio jet appears, motivating speculation that both wind and jet…
I briefly outline the state-paradigm that has emerged from the study of black-hole binaries with RossiXTE. This is the starting point of a number of studies that address the connection between accretion and jet ejection and the physical…
Current astrophysical research suggests that the most persistently luminous objects in the Universe are powered by the flow of matter through accretion disks onto black holes. Accretion disk systems are observed to emit copious radiation…
From hot, tenuous gas dominated by Compton processes, to warm, photoionized emission-line regions, to cold, optically thick fluorescing matter, accreting gas flows in X-ray binaries span a huge portion of the parameter space accessible to…