Accretion Driven Outflows from Black Holes Across the Mass Scale.

Abstract

Accretion driven outflows in the form of highly collimated jets and wide-angle winds carry away immense amount of material and energy from the accretion disks surrounding black holes. During my thesis, I examine the connection between the accretion onto black holes and the resulting outflows that are produced. I begin with two case studies of a supermassive and stellar-mass black hole. In the former, I examine the disk-jet connection, while in the later, I examine the accretion driven winds from the system. Both studies indicate that much can be learned from studying the sources in great detail as well as from comparing the results to other black holes, including their low or high mass counterparts, respectively. As a result, my final study examines both winds and jets across the mass scale. My study indicates that by comparing the outflows across such a large mass range, there is a common dependence of outflow power on bolometric luminosity, i.e., mass accretion rate. Consequently, this relation suggests that winds and jets may be regulated by a common mechanism. In the conclusion of my thesis, I briefly discuss future work that is left to be done in order to understand accretion driven outflows from black holes.