A scheme to unify low-power accreting black holes

2003/05/31 by Heino Falcke, H. Falcke, Elmar Körding +2 · 25 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Accretion (finance) #Active galactic nucleus #Astronomy #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysical jet #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Black hole (networking) #Eddington luminosity #Galaxy #Physics #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Radio galaxy #Supermassive black hole #astro-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1051/0004-6361:20031683

published as Astron.Astrophys.414:895-903,2004 · final version(3 new figures and a table), Astronomy & Astrophysics, accepted, A&A LaTex, 9 pages, 6 figures, also available at http://www.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de/staff/hfalcke/publications.html#powerunify

arxiv created 2003/11/04 · openalex publication_date 2004/01/27 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2022/08/27 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

We explore the evolution in power of black holes of all masses, and their associated jets, within the scheme of an accretion rate-dependent state transition. Below a critical value of the accretion rate all systems are assumed to undergo a transition to a state where the dominant accretion mode is optically thin and radiatively inefficient. In these significantly sub-Eddington systems, the spectral energy distribution is predicted to be dominated by non-thermal emission from a relativistic jet whereas near-Eddington black holes will be dominated instead by emission from the accretion disk. Reasonable candidates for such a sub-Eddington state include X-ray binaries in the hard and quiescent states, the Galactic Center (Sgr A*), LINERs, FR I radio galaxies, and a large fraction of BL Lac objects. Standard jet physics predicts non-linear scaling between the optically thick (radio) and optically thin (optical or X-ray) emission of these systems, which has been confirmed recently in X-ray binaries. We show that this scaling relation is also a function of black hole mass and only slightly of the relativistic Doppler factor. Taking the scaling into account we show that indeed hard and quiescent state X-ray binaries, LINERs, FR I radio galaxies, and BL Lacs can be unified and fall on a common radio/X-ray correlation. This suggests that jet domination is an important stage in the luminosity evolution of accreting black hole systems.

Citations

• Dynamical Evidence for a Black Hole in GX 339−4
• Broad-band X-ray/γ-ray spectra and binary parameters of GX 339–4 and their astrophysical implications
• The classification of BL Lacertae objects: the Ca H&K break
• Radio/X-ray correlation in the low/hard state of GX 339–4

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