Related papers: Characterization of black hole accretion through i…
Accretion onto black holes often proceeds via an accretion disc or a temporary disc-like pattern. Variability features, observed in the light curves of such objects, and theoretical models of accretion flows suggest that accretion discs are…
I outline the theory of accretion onto black holes, and its application to observed phenomena such as X-ray binaries, active galactic nuclei, tidal disruption events, and gamma-ray bursts. The dynamics as well as radiative signatures of…
We provide an invariant characterization of the physical properties of the Kerr spacetime. We introduce two dimensionless invariants, constructed out of some known curvature invariants, that act as detectors for the event horizon and…
In the vicinity of black holes, the influence of strong gravity, plasma physics, and emission processes govern the behavior of the system. Since observations such as those carried out by the EHT are not yet able to unambiguously constrain…
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 horizon-scale images of black holes obtained with the Event Horizon Telescope have provided new probes of their metrics and tests of General Relativity. The images are characterized by a bright, near circular ring from the…
Multiwavelength variability data, combined with spectral-timing analysis techniques, provides information about the causal relationship between different physical components in accreting black holes. Using fast-timing data and long-term…
Several massive black holes exhibit flux variability on time scales that correspond to source sizes of the order of few Schwarzschild radii. We survey the potential of near-infrared and X-ray polarimetry to constrain physical properties of…
The images of supermassive black holes surrounded by optically-thin, radiatively-inefficient accretion flows, like those observed with the Event Horizon Telescope, are characterized by a bright ring of emission surrounding the black-hole…
We propose a real-time method to render high-quality images of a non-rotating black hole with an accretion disc and background stars. Our method is based on beam tracing, but uses precomputed tables to find the intersections of each curved…
The centers of our galaxy and the nearby Messier 87 are known to contain supermassive black holes, which support accretion flows that radiate across the electromagnetic spectrum. Although the composition of the accreting gas is unknown, it…
We introduce a new library of 535,194 model images of the supermassive black holes and Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) targets Sgr A* and M87*, computed by performing general relativistic radiative transfer calculations on general…
Accretion onto black holes often proceeds via an accretion disk or a temporary disk-like pattern. Variability features observed in light curves as well as theoretical models of accretion flows suggest that accretion disks tend to be…
The recent advent of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) has made direct imaging of supermassive black holes a reality. Simulated images of black holes produced via general relativistic ray tracing and radiative transfer provide a key…
We describe the most general nature of accretion and wind flows around a compact object and emphasize on the properties which are special to black hole accretion. The angular momentum distribution in the most general solution is far from…
The study of radiation emitted from black hole accretion discs represents a crucial way to understand the main physical properties of these sources, and in particular the black hole spin. Beside spectral analysis, polarimetry is becoming…
Images of black holes encode both astrophysical and gravitational properties. Detecting highly-lensed features in images can differentiate between these two effects. We present an accretion disk emission model coupled to the Adaptive…
Depending on the astrophysical source and its environment, the accretion flows can exhibit a variety of behaviors and characteristics in accordance with the type of solutions. We study low-angular-momentum accretion flows onto black holes…
We perform three general-relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations of black hole accretion designed to test how sensitive results are to grid resolution in the jet region. The cases differ only in numerics, modelling the same physical…
Numerical simulations of MHD accretion flows in the vicinity of a supermasssive black hole provide important insights to the problem of why and how systems -- such as the Galactic Center -- are underluminous and variable. To access…