Related papers: Probing black-hole accretion through time variabil…
In this chapter, I present a summary of observational tests of the basic picture of disk accretion. An emphasis is placed on tests relevant to black holes, but many of the fundamental results are drawn from studies of other classes of…
The general picture that emerged by the end of 1990s from a large set of optical and X-ray, spectral and timing data was that the X-rays are produced in the innermost hot part of the accretion flow, while the optical/infrared (OIR) emission…
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}$). In…
The three dynamically confirmed wind-fed black hole high-mass X-ray binaries (BH-HMXBs) are suggested to all contain a highly spinning black hole (BH). However, based on the theories of efficient angular momentum transport inside the stars,…
We consider time-dependent models for rotating accretion flows onto black holes, where a transition takes place from an outer cooling-dominated disc to a radiatively inefficient flow in the inner region. In order to allow for a transition…
X-ray variability of active galactic nuclei (AGN) and black hole binaries can be analysed by means of the power spectral density (PSD). The break observed in the power spectrum defines a characteristic variability timescale of the accreting…
The broad X-ray iron line, detected in many active galactic nuclei, is likely to be produced by fluorescence from the X-ray illuminated central parts of an accretion disc close to a supermassive black hole. The time-averaged shape of the…
A tight correlation between the radio and X-ray emission in the hard state of black hole X-ray binaries (BHXRBs) indicates an intrinsic disc-jet connection in stellar black hole accretion systems, though the detailed physics processes at…
Several investigations of the X-ray variability of active galactic nuclei (AGN) using the normalised excess variance (${\sigma^2_{\rm NXS}}$) parameter have shown that variability has a strong anti-correlation with black hole mass ($M_{\rm…
Born in rapidly evolving mini-halos during the first billion years of the Universe, super- massive black holes (SMBH) feed from gas flows spanning many orders of magnitude, from the cosmic web in which they are embedded to their event…
There have been a number of recent spectral models that have been successful in reproducing the observed X-ray spectra of galactic black hole candidates (GBHC). However, there still exists controversy over such issues as: what are the…
Most general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations of black hole (BH) hot accretion flows are initialized with small rotating tori and produce stable jets with only small fluctuations. However, recent studies using larger scale…
Optical outburst spectra of low-mass X-ray binaries enable studies of extreme accretion and ejection phenomena. While some of their spectroscopic features have been analysed in detail, the appearance of broad absorptions in the optical…
In addition to coherent pulsation, many accreting neutron stars exhibit flaring activity and strong aperiodic variability on time scales similar to or shorter than their pulsation period. Such a behavior shows that the accretion flow in the…
We have investigated the relationship between the 2-10 keV X-ray variability amplitude and black hole mass for a sample of 46 radio-quiet active galactic nuclei observed by ASCA. Thirty-three of the objects in our sample exhibited…
Observations of accreting systems often show significant variability (10-20 percent of accretion luminosity) on timescales much longer than expected for the disc regions releasing most of the luminosity. We propose an explicit physical…
An axion cloud surrounding a supermassive black hole can be naturally produced through the superradiance process. Its existence can be examined by the axion induced birefringence effect. It predicts an oscillation of the electric vector…
We investigate state transitions in black hole X-ray binaries through different parameters by using two-dimensional axisymmetric hydrodynamical simulation method. For radiative cooling in hot accretion flow, we take into account the…
We investigate outflows and the physics of super-Eddington versus sub-Eddington regimes in black hole systems. Our focus is on prospective science using next-generation high-resolution soft X-ray instruments. We highlight the properties of…
We study the formation of low-mass X-ray binaries with a black hole as accreting object. The performed semi-analytic analysis reveals that the formation rate of black holes in low-mass X-ray binaries is about two orders of magnitude smaller…