The Evolution of Accreting Black Holes in Outburst

Abstract

Black hole binaries exhibit dramatic changes in their X-ray spectral and timing properties over time, providing important clues about the physical processes that occur in these systems. Black holes and black hole candidates are prime targets for RXTE with observational goals including the study of extreme gravitational fields and jet formation mechanisms. The great wealth of data from RXTE has helped us to learn about these systems as well as raising new questions about accreting black holes. RXTE observations have allowed us to study a wide range of black hole science topics including the connection between the accretion disk and jets, the geometry of the inner accretion flow, and the physical changes that occur between spectral states. In this presentation, I discuss significant results on these topics that have been obtained for persistent and transient black holes over the past several years, and I present results from our program of X-ray and radio observations during the decays of black hole transient outbursts.Comment: 8 pages, to appear in the proceedings of "X-Ray Timing 2003: Rossi and Beyond," eds. P. Kaaret, F.K. Lamb, & J.H. Swank (Melville, NY: American Institute of Physics