Introduction to Black Hole Astrophysics

Abstract

This book is based on the lecture notes of the course on black hole astrophysicsgiven at the University of La Plata, Argentina, by one of us (GER). The materialaims at advanced undergraduate and graduate students with interest in astrophysics.The course takes one semester and is usually complemented by a course on high-energyastrophysics. The material included goes beyond what is found in classictextbooks like that by Shapiro and Teukolsky and is focused exclusively on blackholes. We do not consider applications to other compact objects, such as neutronstars and white dwarfs. Instead, we provide more details on astrophysical manifestationsof black holes. In particular, we include abundant material on jet physics andaccounts of objects such as microquasars, active galactic nuclei, gamma-ray bursts,and ultraluminous X-ray sources. Other topics, normally not covered in introductorytexts, like black holes in alternative theories of gravity, are discussed since we havefound that they are highly stimulating for the students. Obviously, in a book of thiskind, completeness is not possible, and some selection criterion must be applied tothe material. Ours has been quite personal: we selected the topics on which GERhas been working for around 20 years now, and we think that these topics form thecore and starting point for basic research in this fascinating area of astrophysics.In writing the book, we tried to avoid unnecessary technicalities, and to somedegree the book is self-contained. Some previous knowledge of General Relativitywould be desirable, but the reader will find the basic tools in Chap. 1. The appendicesprovide some additional mathematical details that will be useful to pursue thestudy and a guide to the bibliography on the subject.