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The Formation and Disruption of Black Hole Jets

  • Book
  • © 2015

Overview

  • Presents most recent observational results of jet systems in X-ray binaries and AGNs
  • Discusses most recent theoretical approaches to understanding the physics in these systems
  • Provides the first steps towards a consistent, unified physical picture of the formation and disruption of jets in accreting black-hole systems
  • Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Part of the book series: Astrophysics and Space Science Library (ASSL, volume 414)

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Table of contents (10 chapters)

Keywords

About this book

This book reviews the phenomenology displayed by relativistic jets as well as the most recent theoretical efforts to understand the physical mechanisms at their origin. Relativistic jets have been observed and studied in Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) for about half a century and are believed to be fueled by accretion onto a supermassive black hole at the center of the host galaxy. Since the first discovery of relativistic jets associated with so-called "micro-quasars" much more recently, it has seemed clear that much of the physics governing the relativistic outflows in stellar X-ray binaries harboring black holes and in AGN must be common, but acting on very different spatial and temporal scales. With new observational and theoretical results piling up every day, this book attempts to synthesize a consistent, unified physical picture of the formation and disruption of jets in accreting black-hole systems.

The chapters in this book offer overviews accessible not only to specialists but also to graduate students and astrophysicists working in other areas. Covered topics comprise

  • Relativistic jets in stellar systems
  • Launching of AGN jets
  • Parsec-scale AGN jets
  • Kiloparsec-scale AGN jets
  • Black hole magnetospheres
  • Theory of relativistic jets
  • The structure and dynamics of the inner accretion disk
  • The origin of the jet magnetic field
  • X-ray observations, phenomenology, and connection with theory

Reviews

“The book is a pleasant surprise in that each of the ten contributions it contains is a serious mini-review about one facet of the field … . The contributions themselves present an interesting snapshot of current theoretical ideas on black-hole jets and, although inevitably rather subjective, are well written. … Overall, this volume contains a nice mix of theoretical ideas combined with solid observational reviews. I would recommend it for someone wanting to gain a quick snapshot of the field.” (Rob Fender, The Observatory, Vol. 136 (1252), June, 2016)

Editors and Affiliations

  • Academy of Athens, Athens, Greece

    Ioannis Contopoulos

  • Physics Department, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland

    Denise Gabuzda

  • Department of Physics, University of Crete, Heraklion, Greece

    Nikolaos Kylafis

About the editors

Ioannis Contopoulos is a Senior Researcher at the Academy of Athens. His field of research is magnetohydrodynamics with focus on astrophysical jets and winds.
Denise Gabuzda is a Senior Lecturer at the Physics Department, University College Cork. She is working on AGN jets, searching for observational evidence for the presence of helical jet magnetic fields. Together with Ioannis Contopoulos et al. she has discovered observational evidence for the operation of a Poynting-Robertson Battery operating in AGN accretion disks.
Nikos Kylafis is Professor & Dean of the School of Sciences at the University of Crete. His research interests are in Theoretical Astrophysics with special interests in Radiation Transfer, (Jets from) Compact X-ray Sources, Spiral Galaxies, and Astrophysical MASERs.

Bibliographic Information

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