Related papers: X-Ray Microlensing of Bright Quasars
The current status of understanding of the X-ray emission from Seyfert galaxies involves thermal Comptonization of soft photons by mildrelativistic electrons and positrons. I review observational and theoretical arguments supporting such a…
Active galactic nuclei (AGN) have been observed to vary stochastically with 10-20 rms amplitudes over a range of optical wavelengths where the emission arises in an accretion disk. Since the accretion disk is unlikely to vary coherently,…
In this review, I summarize the main X-ray/hard X-ray properties of the accretion flows around black holes and neutron stars based on recent broad-band spectral and timing observations performed by the BeppoSAX and Rossi X-ray Timing…
It is commonly believed that accretion discs are truncated and their inner regions are described by advection dominated accretion flows (ADAFs) in the hard spectral state of black hole X-ray binaries. However, the increasing occurrence of a…
We present a new picture for the central regions of Black Hole X-ray Binaries. In our view, these central regions have a multi-flow configuration which consists in (1) an outer standard accretion disc down to a transition radius r_J, (2) an…
The peaks of the spectra of the accretion disks surrounding massive black holes in quasars are in the far-UV or soft X-ray band, which are usually not observed. However, in the disk corona model, the soft photons from the disk are…
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 Galactic microquasar GRS 1915+105 exhibits various types of light curves. There is, however, no understanding of when a certain type of light curve will be exhibited and only in a handful of cases, the transitions from one type to…
Using a non-linear Monte-Carlo code we investigate the radiative response of an accretion disk corona system to static homogeneous flares. We model a flare by a rapid (comparable to the light crossing time) energy dissipation in the corona…
In quasars which are lensed by galaxies, the point-like images sometimes show sharp and uncorrelated brightness variations (microlensing). These brightness changes are associated with the innermost region of the quasar passing through a…
Microlensing of multiply imaged quasars is a unique probe of quasar structure, down to the size of the accretion disc and the central black hole. Flux ratios between close pairs of images of lensed quasars can be used to constrain the…
The possibility that stellar mass primordial black holes may make up at least a significant fraction of dark matter has recently received much attention, partly as a result of gravitational wave observations, but more specifically from…
We consider the X-ray emission due to bremsstrahlung processes from hot, low radiative-efficiency accretion flows around supermassive and galactic black holes. We calculate surface brightness profiles and Michelson visibility functions for…
Three-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations, covering the spatial domain from hundreds of Schwarzschild radii to $2\ \mathrm{pc}$ around the central supermassive black hole of mass $10^8 M_\odot$, with detailed radiative cooling processes,…
(abridged) We review how the recent increase in X-ray and radio data from black hole and neutron star binaries can be merged together with theoretical advances to give a coherent picture of the physics of the accretion flow in strong…
We aim to find similarities and differences between microflares at coronal bright points found in quiet regions and coronal holes, and to study their relationship with large scale flares. Coronal bright points in quiet regions and in…
We present preliminary results of our study of the impact of strong gravity effects on properties of the high energy radiation produced in accretion flows around supermassive black holes. We refine a model of the X-ray emission from a hot…
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…
A tight non-linear relation exists between the X-ray and UV emission in quasars (i.e. $L_{\rm X}\propto L_{\rm UV}^{\gamma}$), with a dispersion of $\sim$0.2~dex over $\sim$3~orders of magnitude in luminosity. Here we propose a modified…
We build a self-consistent model of a warm scattering corona near an accreting black hole in Kerr geometry, in the regime of slow ($\sim 0.01$ Eddington) mass accretion. An iterative Monte Carlo procedure is developed that incorporates…