Related papers: ASTRO-H White Paper - Stellar-Mass Black Holes
Stars with an initial mass more than ~25 Msun are thought to ultimately become black holes. Then stellar-mass black holes should be ubiquitous but fewer than 20 have been found in our Galaxy to date, all of which have been found through…
Relativistic X-ray emission lines from the inner accretion disk around black holes are reviewed. Recent observations with the Chandra X-ray Observatory, X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission-Newton, and Suzaku are revealing these lines to be good…
Future X-ray instrumentation is expected to allow us to significantly improve the constraints derivedfrom the Fe K lines in AGN, such as the black-hole angular momentum (spin) and the inclination angle of the putative accretion disk. We…
Accreting black holes are unique tools to understand the physics under extreme gravity. While black hole X-ray binaries differ vastly in mass from AGN, their accretion and ejection flows are assumed to be essentially similar. Black hole…
Black hole accretion and jet formation have long been thought to be scale invariant. One empirical relation suggesting scale invariance is the Fundamental Plane of Black Hole activity, which is a plane in the space given by black hole mass…
We study low-mass binary X-ray sources involving stellar mass black holes within massive gravity. Regarding the accretion disk, we adopt the standard model for an optically thick, cool, and geometrically thin disk by Shakura-Sunyaev. For…
The idea of a unified description of supermassive and stellar black holes has been supported by the extension of the empirical radio/X-ray correlation from X-ray binaries to active galactic nuclei through the inclusion of a mass term. This…
We analyze the mass distribution of stellar black holes derived from the light and radial velocity curves of optical stars in close binary systems using dynamical methods. The systematic errors inherent in this approach are discussed. These…
Black hole accretion flows can be divided into two broad classes: cold and hot. Cold accretion flows, which consist of cool optically thick gas, are found at relatively high mass accretion rates. Prominent examples are the standard thin…
How a black hole accretes matter and how this process is regulated are fundamental but unsolved questions in astrophysics. In transient black-hole binaries, a lot of mass stored in an accretion disk is suddenly drained to the central black…
We discuss the implications of new relations between black holes' masses, X-ray luminosities and radio luminosities, as well as the properties of the next generation of radio telescopes, for the goal of finding isolated accreting black…
Supermassive black holes are nowadays believed to reside in most local galaxies. Accretion of gas and black hole mergers play a fundamental role in determining the two parameters defining a black hole: mass and spin. I briefly review here…
Accretion discs in strong gravity ubiquitously produce winds, seen as blueshifted absorption lines in the X-ray band of both stellar mass X-ray binaries (black holes and neutron stars), and supermassive black holes. Some of the most…
We discuss the method, and potential systematic effects therein, used for measuring the mass of stellar-mass black holes in X-ray binaries. We restrict our discussion to the method that relies on the validity of Kepler's laws; we refer to…
Tidal forces close to massive black holes can violently disrupt stars that make a close approach. These extreme events are discovered via bright X-ray and optical/UV flares in galactic centers. Prior studies based on modeling decaying flux…
We explore the evolution in power of black holes of all masses, and their associated jets, within the scheme of an accretion rate-dependent state transition. Below a critical value of the accretion rate all systems are assumed to undergo a…
Strong winds from massive stars are a topic of interest to a wide range of astrophysical fields. In High-Mass X-ray Binaries the presence of an accreting compact object on the one side allows to infer wind parameters from studies of the…
Supermassive black holes (BH) at the centres of galaxies can rapidly change their mass and spin by gas accretion and mergers. Using hydrodynamical cosmological simulations, with prescriptions for BH growth and feedback from Active Galactic…
We discuss the emergent spectra from accreting black holes, considering in particular the case where the accretion is characterized by relativistic bulk motion. We suggest that such accretion is likely to occur in a wide variety of black…
Twenty five years have passed by since models of accretions and jets have separately emerged. Today, it is understood that these two objects are related to each other in a fundamental way. In a binary system, matter from an accretion disk…