SS433, microquasars, and other transients

TL;DR

This paper reviews the significance of SS433 and other microquasars in understanding black hole accretion and jet phenomena, highlighting recent radio observational advances and future prospects with new radio telescopes.

Contribution

It provides an overview of radio studies of SS433 and microquasars, emphasizing recent developments in high-resolution radio observations and their implications for accretion state transitions.

Findings

Enhanced understanding of jet-disc symbiosis in microquasars.

Advances in e-VLBI enable more flexible, high-resolution studies.

Future SKA pathfinders will open new observational opportunities.

Abstract

X-ray binaries have been an important key in understanding the jet-disc symbiosis in accreting black holes on all mass scales, from stellar-mass to supermassive black holes. SS433 was the first Galactic XRB that has been extensively studied in the radio regime. The radio properties, including the highest angular resolution data can now be better understood in the framework for accretion disc state transitions that is observed in microquasars (black hole X-ray binary systems). SS433 remains unique in various ways to date, and there is still much to learn about black hole accretion phenomena. In the meantime, the electronic very long baseline (e-VLBI) developments at the European VLBI Network (EVN) has allowed us to study microquasars and other transients at milliarcsecond resolutions more flexibly than was possible before. Even more new opportunities will arise as the SKA pathfinders become operational.