Radio emission and jets from microquasars

To some extent, all Galactic binary systems hosting a compact object are potential `microquasars', so much as all galactic nuclei may have been quasars, once upon a time. The necessary ingredients for a compact object of stellar mass to qualify as a microquasar seem to be: accretion, rotation and magnetic field. The presence of a black hole may help, but is not strictly required, since neutron star X-ray binaries and dwarf novae can be powerful jet sources as well. The above issues are broadly discussed throughout this Chapter, with a a rather trivial question in mind: why do we care? In other words: are jets a negligible phenomenon in terms of accretion power, or do they contribute significantly to dissipating gravitational potential energy? How do they influence their surroundings? The latter point is especially relevant in a broader context, as there is mounting evidence that outflows powered by super-massive black holes in external galaxies may play a crucial role in regulating the evolution of cosmic structures. Microquasars can also be thought of as a form of quasars for the impatient: what makes them appealing, despite their low number statistics with respect to quasars, are the fast variability time-scales. In the first approximation, the physics of the jet-accretion coupling in the innermost regions should be set by the mass/size of the accretor: stellar mass objects vary on 10^5-10^8 times shorter time-scales, making it possible to study variable accretion modes and related ejection phenomena over average Ph.D. time-scales. [Abridged]Comment: 28 pages, 13 figures, To appear in Belloni, T. (ed.): The Jet Paradigm - From Microquasars to Quasars, Lect. Notes Phys. 794 (2009

CMS Physics Technical Design Report: Addendum on High Density QCD with Heavy Ions

This report presents the capabilities of the CMS experiment to explore the rich heavy-ion physics programme offered by the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The collisions of lead nuclei at energies $\sqrt{s_{NN}}= 5.5\,{\rm TeV}$ , will probe quark and gluon matter at unprecedented values of energy density. The prime goal of this research is to study the fundamental theory of the strong interaction \u2014 Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) \u2014 in extreme conditions of temperature, density and parton momentum fraction (low- x ). This report covers in detail the potential of CMS to carry out a series of representative Pb-Pb measurements. These include "bulk" observables, (charged hadron multiplicity, low p T inclusive hadron identified spectra and elliptic flow) which provide information on the collective properties of the system, as well as perturbative probes such as quarkonia, heavy-quarks, jets and high p T hadrons which yield "tomographic" information of the hottest and densest phases of the reaction