Edited by Shin Mineshige and Kazuo Makishima
This volume contains
the proceedings of the international workshop ``Stellar-Mass,
Intermediate-Mass, and Supermassive Black Holes'' held at Kyoto, Japan, during
28-31 October 2003. This is a collection of presented papers, and is intended
as a guide for those who are interested in this field.
Historically,
astrophysical black holes were classified into two categories: stellar-mass
black holes found mostly in Our Galaxy, and supermassive ones in the center of
a certain class of distant galaxies. However, such a classical view has been
drastically renewed over the past decade, thanks to the rapid progress in
multi-wavelength observations as well as in theory and computation. For
example, observations with ASCA, ROSAT, Chandra, and XMM-Newton have revealed
that intermediate-mass black holes may exist in nearby galaxies, in the form of
bright, compact, off-nuclear X-ray sources called ultra-luminous X-ray sources
(ULXs). Narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies (NLS1s) are another interesting subject,
since they seem to represent the lowest-mass end of the overall distribution of
supermassive black holes. Further, we have heard about the discovery of black
holes in the center of some globular clusters, though still controversial.
Among various aspects
of astrophysical black holes under a rapid recent progress, we focus on the
following topics:
- Galactic black holes shining at
Eddington luminosity
- Nature of ultra-luminous X-ray sources
(ULXs)
- Narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies
- Case of the Galactic center
- Black hole variability:
multi-wavelength observations vs theory
- Magnetohydrodynamical (MHD) accretion
flow and jets
- Possible formation scenarios of the
more massive BHs
- Observability of general relativistic
effects
- New instrumentation for future black
hole research
This
volume will be a good reference to those who are starting or are interested in
the field of astrophysical black hole, as well as the participants.