Related papers: A short observational view of black hole X-ray bin…
A common question about compact objects in high energy astrophysics is whether it is possible to distinguish black hole from neutron star systems with some other property that is not the mass of the compact object. Up to now a few…
Relativistic reflection features are commonly observed in the X-ray spectra of accreting black holes. In the presence of high quality data and with the correct astrophysical model, X-ray reflection spectroscopy can be quite a powerful tool…
Several AGN and black hole X-ray binaries show a clear very broad iron line which is strong evidence that the black holes are rapidly spinning. Detailed analysis of these objects shows that the emission line is not significantly affected by…
I review observations of the X-ray spectra of Galactic Black Hole Candidates, and theoretical ideas as to how these can be produced. X-ray reflection should enable different source geometries to be distinguished, but the ionisation…
Powerful outflows along the accretion disk, known as disk winds, are sometimes launched in black hole X-ray binaries. These winds often manifest themselves in X-ray spectra as blueshifted, highly ionized absorption lines. Previous…
The models that seek to explain the reflection spectrum in black hole binaries usually invoke a point-like primary source of hard X-rays. This source illuminates the accretion disk and gives rise to the discrete (lines) and…
I summarize the main observational properties of low-luminosity AGNs in nearby galaxies to argue that they are the high-mass analogs of black hole X-ray binaries in the "low/hard" state. The principal characteristics of low-state AGNs can…
The accretion/ejection coupling in accreting black hole binaries has been described by empirical relations between the X-ray/radio and X-ray/optical-infrared luminosities. These correlations were initially supposed to be universal. However,…
We summarize the quiescent X-ray observations of transient low-mass X-ray binaries. These observations show that, in quiescence, binaries containing black holes are fainter than those containing neutron stars. This has triggered a number of…
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…
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…
Over the past half century, X-ray and radio observations of accreting neutron stars and stellar mass black holes have yielded a rich observational picture with common features including state transitions and jet formation, but also sharp…
Multi-wavelength observations of the black hole X-ray binary XTE J1118+480 have offered abundant spectral and timing information about the source, and have thus provided serious challenges to theoretical models. We propose a coupled…
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…
Luminous accreting stellar mass and supermassive black holes produce power-law continuum X-ray emission from a compact central corona. Reverberation time lags occur due to light travel time-delays between changes in the direct coronal…
We investigate the dependence of observational properties of black hole X-ray binaries on the inclination angle i of their orbits. We find the following: (1) Transient black hole binaries show no trend in their quiescent X-ray luminosities…
Recent X-ray observations have detected a class of very faint X-ray transients in the Galaxy which probably reveal a previously unrecognised type of accretion on to neutron stars or black holes. We show that these systems cannot have…
The Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer is an X-ray observatory measuring the X-ray polarization in the 2-8 keV energy range. Highly sensitive to the system's geometry, X-ray polarization is a unique method to probe the structure of X-ray…
We present preliminary results on Herschel/PACS mid/far-infrared photometric observations of INTEGRAL supergiant High Mass X-ray Binaries (HMXBs), with the aim of detecting the presence and characterizing the nature of absorbing material…
INTEGRAL has made a very significant contribution to our understanding of the physics of AGN. We illustrate this progress by looking at the considerations that were made at the time of the selection of the INTEGRAL mission and discussing…