Winds of Change: The Physics of Accretion and Ejection Around Stellar-Mass Black Holes
In the last decade, radio and X-ray observations of stellar-mass black holes have revolutionized our understanding of the physics of accretion and ejection in strong gravitational fields. We now know that black holes can launch not only powerful relativistic jets that dominate the energetics of the accretion flow, but also highly-ionized winds that carry away the vast majority of the infalling gas. In this talk, I will focus on recent efforts in high-resolution X-ray spectroscopy to understand the role of these accretion disk winds, which may carry away as much as 25x more matter than reaches the black hole, and exert a powerful influence on the black hole feeding rate.
After summarizing the current picture of accreting stellar mass black holes and reviewing a few major developments from the last decade, I will present some new results from our recent studies of outflows, including some of the deepest absorption lines and the fastest wind variability ever observed by the Chandra X-ray Observatory, as well as constraints on massive, relativistic jets. I will discuss how insights from high-resolution X-ray spectroscopy can be a linchpin for our understanding of the complex processes that govern black hole accretion.