The many tones of accretion - to the memory of Tomaso Belloni

The Galactic population of accreting black holes

7 Sept 2026, 17:30

15m

Cefalù

Talk Accretion Physics & Spectral States. Session 1.2: States & Transitions

Speaker

Jorge Casares (Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias)

Description

The Milky Way is thought to be populated with ~103-104 stellar-mass black holes (BHs) that are fed by gas accreted from companion stars in tight orbits. Most of these BHs are transient and exhibit episodic X-ray outbursts on decadal timescales - the smoking gun that led to their discovery. However, since their duty cycles are very low, the vast majority remain hidden in a dormant state, awaiting to be discovered.
Here I present the current census of such transient BH X-ray binaries, summarize their observed properties and discuss new avenues to increase the size of the known population.