Related papers: Jets in Quasars
Being dominated by non-thermal emission from aligned relativistic jets, blazars allow us to elucidate the physics of extragalactic jets, and, ultimately, how energy is extracted from the central black hole. Crucial information about jet…
This paper reviews the topic of sub-parsec - scale jets in quasars, and covers the the following issues: observations of parsec and sub-parsec scale jets; energy dissipation and particle acceleration; radiative processes; magnetic fields,…
This article gives a brief historical introduction and reviews our current understanding of jets in radio galaxies and quasars from an observational perspective, with an emphasis on observations at radio wavelengths. Recent results on the…
Observations of jets from quasars and other types of accreting black hole are briefly summarized. The importance of beaming and $\gamma$-ray observations for understanding the origin of these jets is emphasised. It is argued that both the…
Despite their different nature and physics, blazars and gamma-ray bursts have in common very powerful relativistic jets, which make them the most luminous sources in the Universe. The energy extraction from the central compact object, the…
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 power of blazar jets rivals the power that gravity can extract from accreting matter. The mechanism launching and accelerating jets can be considered as the most efficient engine operating in radio--loud sources. It is still a matter of…
We propose and test a fairly simple idea that could account for the blazar sequence: all jets are launched with similar energy per baryon, independently of their power. For instance, flat-spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs), the most powerful…
We have not identified for sure what is the mechanism launching, accelerating and collimating relativistic jets. The two most likely possibilities are the gravitational energy of the accreting matter or the rotational energy of a spinning…
To some extent, all Galactic binary systems hosting a compact object are potential `microquasars', so much as all galactic nuclei may have been quasars, once upon a time. The necessary ingredients for a compact object of stellar mass to…
The morphologies of detected jets in X-ray binaries are almost as diverse as their number. This is due to different jet properties and ambient media that these jets encounter. It is important to understand the physics of these objects and…
I present an overview of past, present and future research on microquasars and jets, showing that microquasars, i.e. galactic jet sources, are among the best laboratories for high energy phenomena. After remindind the analogy with quasars,…
The Fermi and Swift satellites, together with ground based Cherenkov telescopes, has greatly improved our knowledge of blazars, namely Flat Spectrum Radio Quasars and BL Lac objects, since all but the most powerful emit most of their…
We discuss radio observations of a sample of radio-weak and radio-intermediate quasars which demonstrate that - just like their radio-loud counterparts - radio-weak quasars too have relativistic jets in their nuclei. Moreover, a VLA survey…
We report on the Swift/XRT observation and classification of eleven blazar candidates at $z>4$. These sources were selected as part of a sample of extremely radio-loud quasars, in order to focus on quasars with jets oriented roughly close…
Blazars are a sub-class of quasars with Doppler boosted jets oriented close to the line of sight, and thus efficient probes of supermassive black hole growth and their environment, especially at high redshifts. Here we report on Very Long…
We propose that the knots of the large-scale jets in powerful radio sources represent moving and separate portions of the jet matter, with the excess kinetic power. This can explain many morphological properties of quasar jets - like high…
In our review of the blazar phenomenon, we discuss blazar models, with a focus on the following issues: sub-parsec jets and their environment; energy dissipation and particle acceleration; and radiative processes.
If quasar jets are accelerated by magnetic fields but terminate as matter dominated, where and how does the transition occur between the Poynting-dominated and matter-dominated regimes? To address this question, we study constraints which…
In this work I review the observational constraints imposed on the energetics and magnetisation of quasar jets, in the context of theoretical expectations. The discussion is focused on issues regarding the jet production efficiency, matter…