The balance of power: accretion and feedback in stellar mass black holes

TL;DR

This review examines how stellar-mass black holes balance accretion energy with environmental feedback through radiation, jets, and winds, analyzing methods and applying them to X-ray binary outbursts, with implications for supermassive black holes.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of methods to estimate accretion and feedback in stellar-mass black holes and compares these processes with neutron stars, highlighting their similarities.

Findings

Quantitative methods for estimating accretion and feedback.

Application to a black hole X-ray binary outburst.

Comparison showing similar accretion-feedback coupling in neutron stars and black holes.

Abstract

In this review we discuss the population of stellar-mass black holes in our galaxy and beyond, which are the extreme endpoints of massive star evolution. In particular we focus on how we can attempt to balance the available accretion energy with feedback to the environment via radiation, jets and winds, considering also possible contributions to the energy balance from black hole spin and advection. We review quantitatively the methods which are used to estimate these quantities, regardless of the details of the astrophysics close to the black hole. Once these methods have been outlined, we work through an outburst of a black hole X-ray binary system, estimating the flow of mass and energy through the different accretion rates and states. While we focus on feedback from stellar mass black holes in X-ray binary systems, we also consider the applicability of what we have learned to supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei. As an important control sample we also review the coupling between accretion and feedback in neutron stars, and show that it is very similar to that observed in black holes, which strongly constrains how much of the astrophysics of feedback can be unique to black holes.