Related papers: Microquasars: Open Questions and Future Perspectiv…
Ongoing microlensing surveys have already yielded more than five hundred microlensing events, most of which have been identified in real-time. In this review I present the basic theory and observational status of these surveys. I highlight…
Recent observational and theoretical results on blazars are presented and discussed. We are beginning to understand the rich phenomenology of blazars, and we are finding trends which will hopefully lead us to unveil the physics of these…
The generation of relativistic jets in active sources such as blazars is a complex problem with many aspects, most of them still not fully understood. Relativistic jets are likely produced by the accretion of matter and magnetic fields onto…
We review advances in the theoretical and computational studies of disk winds, jets and outflows including: the connection between accretion and jets, the launch of jets from magnetized disks, the coupled evolution of jets and disks, the…
Based on recently reported results, we present arguments that sign changes in proper acceleration of test particles on the symmetry axis and close to the r=2M surface of quasi-spherical objects - related to the quadrupole moment of the…
While jets appear as a fundamental result of accretion processes onto compact objects in X-ray binaries, there is as yet no standard model for their underlying physics. The origin of the observed disk-jet coupling also remains largely…
Thanks to the availability of high-resolution high-sensitivity telescopes such as the Very Large Array, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the Chandra X-ray Observatory, there is now a wealth of observational data on relativistic jets from…
Relativistic jets carry energy and particles from compact to very large scales compared with their initial radius. This is possible due to their remarkable collimation despite their intrinsic unstable nature. In this contribution, I review…
The three basic ingredients - a spinning compact object, an accretion disc and a collimated relativistic jet - make microquasars a galactic scaled-down version of the radio-loud AGN. That explains the large interest attributed to this new…
There are two possible causes of variability in gravitationally lensed quasars: intrinsic fluctuations of the quasar and ``microlensing'' by compact objects along the line of sight. If disentangled from each other, microlens-induced…
The discovery of jets from tidal disruption events (TDEs) rejuvenated the old field of relativistic jets powered by accretion onto supermassive black holes. In this Chapter, we first review the extensive multi-wavelength observations of…
Accreting compact objects are crucial to understand several important astrophysical phenomena such as Type Ia supernovae, gravitational waves, or X-ray and $\gamma$-ray bursts. In addition, they are natural laboratories to infer fundamental…
We review recent observational and theoretical results on the relationship between circumstellar accretion disks and jets in young stellar objects. We then present a theoretical framework that interprets jets as accretion-powered,…
The recent discovery by Paredes et al. (2000) of a persistent microquasar that is positionally coincident with an unidentified gamma-ray source has open the possibility that other sources in the Third EGRET Catalog could be interpreted as…
Relativistic jets are ubiquitous in astrophysical systems that contain compact objects. They transport large amounts of energy to large distances from the source, and their interaction with the ambient medium has a crucial effect on the…
The current understanding of the formation of powerful bi-directional jets in systems such as radio galaxies and quasars is that the process involves a supermassive black hole that is being fed with magnetized gas through an orbiting…
Microquasars are compact binary systems hosting collimated relativistic jets. They have long been proposed as cosmic-ray accelerators, probed via the gamma-ray emission produced by relativistic particles. However, the observational evidence…
We investigate the motion of free relativistic particles relative to the ambient medium around a gravitationally collapsed system. If the relative speed exceeds a critical value given by c/sqrt(2), the gravitational tidal effects exhibit…
The recent improvement in VLBI arrays is providing information of the emission and magnetic field structure of relativistic jets, both extragalactic and galactic (microquasars), with unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution. These…
Observational and theoretical studies point to microquasars (MQs) as possible counterparts of a significant fraction of the unidentified gamma-ray sources detected so far. At present, a proper scenario to explain the emission beyond soft…