Black hole binaries and microquasars

• Published in: Frontiers of physics Vol. 8; no. 6; pp. 630 - 660
• Main Author: Zhang, Shuang-Nan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Higher Education Press 01.12.2013; Springer Berlin Heidelberg; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: accretion and accretion disks; Astronomy; Astrophysics and Cosmology; Atomic; Black holes; Condensed Matter Physics; Deposition; jets and bursts; Microquasars; Molecular; neutron stars; Optical and Plasma Physics; Particle and Nuclear Physics; Physics; Physics and Astronomy; Review Article; Thermal stability; X ray binaries; X ray stars; X-ray sources; X射线双星; γ-ray sources; 二进制文件; 微类星体; 热吸积流; 热稳定性; 状态转换; 高能量; 黑洞; accretion and accretion disks; neutron stars; jets and bursts; X-ray sources; Γ-ray sources; X-ray binaries; black holes
• ISSN: 2095-0462; 2095-0470
• DOI: 10.1007/s11467-013-0306-z

This is a general review on the observations and physics of black hole X-ray binaries and microquasars, with the emphasize on recent developments in the high energy regime. The focus is put on understanding the accretion flows and measuring the parameters of black holes in them. It includes mainly two parts: i) Brief review of several recent review article on this subject; ii) Further development on several topics, including black hole spin measurements, hot accretion flows, corona formation, state transitions and thermal stability of standard think disk. This is thus not a regular bottom-up approach, which I feel not necessary at this stage. Major effort is made in making and incorporating from many sources useful plots and illustrations, in order to make this article more comprehensible to non-expert readers. In the end I attempt to make a unification scheme on the accretion-outflow (wind/jet) connections of all types of accreting BHs of all accretion rates and all BH mass scales, and finally provide a brief outlook.