Related papers: Microquasars: Open Questions and Future Perspectiv…
The microquasar phenomenon is associated with the production of jets by X-ray binaries and, as such, may be associated with the majority of such systems. In this chapter we briefly outline the associations, definite, probable, possible, and…
Current phenomenological studies of jet observables at colliders are clearly limited by the theoretical uncertainties inherent in the next-to-leading order QCD description. We discuss the recent progress made towards the calculation of QCD…
Collimated outflows (jets) are ubiquitous in the universe appearing around sources as diverse as protostars and extragalactic supermassive blackholes. Jets are thought to be magnetically collimated, and launched from a magnetized accretion…
Relativistic jets, or highly collimated and fast-moving outflows, are endemic to many astrophysical phenomena. The jets produced by gamma-ray bursts and tidal disruption events are accompanied by the accretion of material onto a black hole…
Microquasars, X-ray binary systems that generate relativistic jets, were discovered in our Galaxy in the last decade of the XXth century. Their name indicates that they are manifestations of the same physics as quasars but on a completely…
There are several lines of evidence indicating that the ultra-relativistic outflows powering gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are collimated into narrow jets. However, these are indirect, and the jet structure is rather poorly constrained. What is…
Theoretical and observational work show that jets from AGN can trigger star formation. However, in the Milky Way the first -and so far- only clear case of relativistic jets inducing star formation has been found in the surroundings of the…
We present a new, semi-analytic formalism to model the acceleration and collimation of relativistic jets in a gravitational potential. The gravitational energy density includes the kinetic, thermal, and electromagnetic mass contributions.…
We have recently put forward a 'unified' semi-empirical model for the coupling between accretion and jet production in galactic black hole X-ray binaries (published in MNRAS, 2004). In this paper we summarise this model and briefly discuss…
Our knowledge of the phenomenology of accretion onto black holes has increased considerably thanks to ten years of observations with the RXTE satellite. However, only recently it has been possible to derive a scheme for the outburst…
Some topics in the theory of jets are reviewed. These include jet precession, unconfined jets, the origin of knots, the internal shock model as a unifying theme from protostellar jets to Gamma-ray bursts, relations between the…
Variability in gravitationally lensed quasars can be due to intrinsic fluctuations of the quasar or due to ``microlensing'' by compact objects along the line of sight. If disentangled from each other, microlens-induced variability can be…
I review the progress made on the physics of black hole systems in the context of the analogy between AGN and microquasars that was proposed one decade ago. If the emerging empirical correlations between the observational properties of…
Past years have brought an increasingly wider recognition of the ubiquity of relativistic outflows (jets) in galactic nuclei, which has turned jets into an effective tool for investigating the physics of nuclear regions in galaxies. A brief…
The inward flow of matter through accretion disks is driven by MHD turbulence. Global general relativistic MHD simulations shed quantitative light on this process, revealing a number of aspects of accretion previously unrecognized. Among…
Most of the electromagnetic output of blazars (BL Lac objects and Flat Spectrum Radio Quasars) comes out in the gamma-ray band, making the Large Area Telescope [0.1-100 GeV] onboard the Fermi satellite and the Cherenkov telescopes crucial…
We are developing a project aimed at studying the physical properties, origin and evolution of low-ionization structures in planetary nebulae. Within this project we have identified a number of pairs of highly collimated low-ionization…
This review attempts to describe developments in the fields of quasar and quasar host galaxies in the past five. In this time period, the Sloan and 2dF quasar surveys have added several tens of thousands of quasars, with Sloan quasars being…
Extragalactic relativistic jets are engines able to carry out to large distances a huge amount of power, not only in the form of radiation, but especially in the form of kinetic energy of matter and fields. As such, they can be thought as…
Microquasars are binary systems that harbor a normal star and a compact object (black-hole or neutron star), and show relativistic outflows (or jets). The matter that forms these jets is of likely stellar origin, previously expelled from…