Colloquium
Relativistic jets from stellar-mass black holes and neutron stars: the MeerKAT revolution

Resumen

Relativistic jets are amongst the most important and powerful phenomena in astrophysics, and yet also amongst the least understood. Most well known in the context of supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei (AGN), relativistic jets are also the underlying mechanism behind gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and LIGO neutron star merger afterglows, and a fundamental component of Tidal Disruption Events. Stellar mass (<20 solar masses) black holes and neutron stars in binary systems, known as 'X-ray binaries' (XRBs), are the local, lower-mass, and hence faster-evolving analogues to AGN, as well as being the direct descendants of GRBs and on the same mass scale as the LIGO merging BH. The near scale-independence of accretion and jet formation with BH mass, theoretically expected and observationally established, demonstrates that what we learn from XRBs can be applied to more massive systems such as AGN. In the past 6 years observations with the MeerKAT telescope have revolutionised our understanding of these jets, allowing unprecedented investigations into the power of black hole jets, measured as we track them decelerating and transferring their launch kinetic energy to the ambient ISM. These observations have also increased our sample size sufficiently that we can now make definitive statements about the relation between jet speed, jet precession, the nature of the compact object, and the connection to black hole spin.