Related papers: ASTRO-H White Paper - Stellar-Mass Black Holes
We present first results of a long-term project which aims at multi-scale, multi-physics simulations of wind accretion in microquasars and high-mass X-ray binaries. The 3D hydrodynamical simulations cover all scales, from the circum-binary…
X-ray reverberation echoes are assumed to be produced in the strongly distorted spacetime around accreting supermassive black holes. This signal allows us to spatially map the geometry of the inner accretion flow - a region which cannot yet…
Stellar-mass binary black hole (BBH) mergers occurring within the disks of active galactic nuclei (AGN) are promising sources for gravitational waves detectable by the LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA (LVK) interferometers. Some of these events have…
This White Paper, submitted to the recent ESA call for science themes to define its future large missions, advocates the need for a transformational leap in our understanding of two key questions in astrophysics: 1) How does ordinary matter…
X-ray timing observations of accreting stellar mass black holes have shown that they can produce signals with such short time scales that we must be probing very close to the innermost stable circular orbit that is predicted by the theory…
We recommend that the search for exoplanets around binary stars be extended to include X-ray binaries in which the accretor is a white dwarf, neutron star, or black hole. We present a novel idea for detecting planets bound to such mass…
With the fundamental stress mechanism of accretion disks identified--correlated MHD turbulence driven by the magneto-rotational instability--it has become possible to make numerical simulations of accretion disk dynamics based on…
Accreting supermassive black hole binaries are powerful multimessenger sources emitting both gravitational and EM radiation. Understanding the accretion dynamics of these systems and predicting their distinctive EM signals is crucial to…
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…
Accretion onto black holes is an efficient mechanism in converting the gas mass-energy into energetic outputs as radiation, wind and jet. Tidal disruption events, in which stars are tidally torn apart and then accreted onto supermassive…
Black holes depend only on mass and spin, while what we see from the accretion flow in steady state depends also on mass accretion rate and (weakly) inclination. Hence we should be able to scale the accretion flow properties from the…
We examine the thin accretion disk behaviors surrounding black holes embedded in cold dark matter halos and scalar field dark matter halos. We first calculate the event horizons and derive the equations of motion and effective potential in…
Accretion discs around super-massive black holes (SMBH) not only power active galactic nuclei (AGNs), but also host single and binary embedded stellar-mass black holes (EBHs) that grow rapidly from gas accretion. The merger of these EBHs…
The theory of coronal evaporation predicts the formation of an inner hole in the cool thin accretion disk for mass accretion rates below a certain value (~ 1/50 of the Eddington mass accretion rate) and the sudden disappearance of this hole…
Disc spectra from highly luminous black hole binaries are observed to be rather simple, despite theoretical predictions to the contrary. We collate the disc-dominated spectra from multiple observations of 10 separate sources, and show that…
A large number of Ultra-Luminous X-ray Sources in external galaxies is now known, but the discussion about their nature is still unsettled: intermediate-mass black holes or stellar-mass black holes accreting above the Eddington limit? A…
Accretion disks around black holes radiate a significant fraction of the rest mass of the accreting material in the form of thermal radiation from within a few gravitational radii of the black hole ($ r \lesssim 20 G M / c^{2}$). In…
Black holes are by definition black, and therefore cannot be directly observed by using electromagnetic radiations. Convincing identification of black holes must necessarily depend on the identification of a very specially behaving matter…
We derive the mass function of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) over the redshift range 0<z<2, using the latest deep luminosity and mass functions of field galaxies. Applying this mass function, combined with the bolometric luminosity…
Adopting the advection dominated accretion flow (ADAF) model, we have re-examined the radiation emitted by isolated stellar-mass black holes accreting from the interstellar medium of our Galaxy. Two distinct types of black holes are given…