Speaker
Description
The inflow of matter onto astronomical objects is linked to the generation of outflows across the Universe, ranging from proto-planetary disks to merging neutron stars and gamma-ray bursts, to stellar-mass and supermassive black holes.
Low-mass X-ray binaries, hosting either stellar-mass black holes or neutron stars, are the most common type of transient in the Galaxy and exhibit bright jets detected in the radio band.
Compact jets from X-ray binaries, typical of hard accretion states remain unresolved at most angular scales, with only a few cases spatially resolved by milli-arcsecond observations. For years, such high-resolution observations were considered the only way to detect and track the transient jets launched in intermediate accretion states, although they are technically demanding and must be carried out shortly after launch.
The advent of MeerKAT has transformed our view of X-ray binary jets. It has more than doubled the number of black hole jet detections in the hard state, most with simultaneous X-ray coverage, revealing new features of the accretion-jet coupling and associated physical processes.
Even more remarkably, MeerKAT has shown that transient relativistic jets, when observed with sufficient surface brightness sensitivity, can be tracked from launch to terminal deceleration in the interstellar medium over months to years. In six years, it has tripled the sample of such jets, providing the most comprehensive data set available to constrain black hole jet power, which has been instrumental in proposing a new jet paradigm.
I will present some of the key results obtained in the study of X-ray binaries with MeerKAT, highlighting the most significant discoveries and their implications.
| Topics | Cradle of Life & Our Galaxy |
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