Phenomenological Analogies in Black Hole Systems of all Masses

Abstract

I review the progress made on the physics of relativistic jets from black hole systems in the context of the analogy between AGN and microquasars that was proposed one decade ago. If the emerging empirical correlations between the observational properties of stellar and supermassive black holes will become more robust, we will use them to determine the mass and spin of black holes, independently of theoretical models. Microquasars are fossils of sources of Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) of long duration, and their kinematics provides observational clues on the physics of collapsars. If jets in GRBs, microquasars and AGN are due to a unique universal magnetohydrodynamic mechanism, synergy between the research on these three different classes of cosmic objects will lead to further progress in black hole physics and astrophysics.Comment: Invited review at the conference "Stellar-Mass, Intermediate-Mass, and Supermassive Black Holes." Kyoto, 25-31 October 2003. 11 pages, 5 figures (4 in color). To be published as Progress of Theoretical Physics, Supplemen