About this Research Topic
Accretion onto black holes spans many orders of magnitude in mass, different modes of accretion, kinds of feeding, types of environments, and mechanisms for feedback. The feeding of, and feedback from black holes, is responsible for X-ray binary state transitions, jets from AGN in ellipticals and spirals, differences in isolated to rich environments, redshift dependence, and black hole scaling relations. One of the unfortunate consequences of this vast phenomenology is the partitioning of the community into relatively narrow research programs with little cross-dialogue. But scale invariance imposes constraints on the nature of the explanations that must apply to some degree across the mass scale. The guest editors of this collection feel that some effort should be made to get different communities to think beyond the ideas emerging from the confines of their research programs in order to work toward a more global perspective. The articles published herein reflect this philosophy.
The goal of this series is to get researchers to consider or develop explanations that may apply beyond their research-specific areas. For example, radio galaxies such as M87 tend to have very massive black holes and powerful jets, but low excitation signatures in accretion. A current idea is that gas from the hot halo is funneled inwards to feed these black holes. Can we extend this explanation to radio quasars that appear at higher redshift and in less dense environments? Can we understand the morphology of the jets triggered by the hot halo (i.e. FRI) compared to FRIIs or FR0s etc.?
Authors should review the state of affairs in their specific area as an anchor from which to extend their ideas into other domains of black hole accretion to give people a sense of how they view the broader horizon. This is not strictly speaking a space of right or wrong answers. The editors will encourage you to stretch your ideas to encompass greater phenomenology. We wish to create a picture of the current paradigm for black hole feeding and feedback across the mass scale and across the research community.
The goal of this series is to get researchers to consider or develop explanations that may apply beyond their research-specific areas. For example, radio galaxies such as M87 tend to have very massive black holes and powerful jets, but low excitation signatures in accretion. A current idea is that gas from the hot halo is funneled inwards to feed these black holes. Can we extend this explanation to radio quasars that appear at higher redshift and in less dense environments? Can we understand the morphology of the jets triggered by the hot halo (i.e. FRI) compared to FRIIs or FR0s etc.?
Authors should review the state of affairs in their specific area as an anchor from which to extend their ideas into other domains of black hole accretion to give people a sense of how they view the broader horizon. This is not strictly speaking a space of right or wrong answers. The editors will encourage you to stretch your ideas to encompass greater phenomenology. We wish to create a picture of the current paradigm for black hole feeding and feedback across the mass scale and across the research community.
Keywords: Black hole feeding/feedback, black hole scaling relations, black hole accretion, quasars and active galactic nuclei, black hole x-ray binaries
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
