Basic questions about black holes, some of which are fairly old, include (1) What is a black hole? (2) Do black holes exist? And the answer to this depends a good deal on the answer to (1), (3) Where, when, why, and how have they formed? and (4) What are they good for? Here I attempt some elaboration of the questions and partial answers, noting that general relativity is required to described some of the phenomena, while dear old Isaac Newton is OK for others.

Active galactic nuclei, hosting supermassive black holes and launching relativistic jets, are the most numerous objects on the gamma-ray sky. At the other end of the mass scale, phenomena related to stellar mass black holes, in particular gamma-ray bursts and microquasars, are also seen on the gamma-ray sky. While all of them are thought to launch relativistic jets, the diversity even within each of these classes is enormous. In this review, I will discuss recent very high energy gamma-ray results that underline both the similarity of the black hole systems, as well as their diversity.

The Blandford-Znajek process, the steady electromagnetic energy extraction from a rotating black hole, is widely believed to work for driving relativistic jets, although it is still under debate where the electric current is driven. We address this issue analytically by investigating the time-dependent state in the Boyer-Lindquist and Kerr-Schild coordinate systems. This analysis suggests that a non-ideal magnetohydrodynamic region is required in the time-dependent state, while not in the steady state.

We present recent results of the studies of low angular momentum accretion of matter onto Schwarzschild black hole using fully relativistic numerical simulations. We compare the resulting 2D structure of transonic flows with results of 1D pseudo-Newtonian computations of non-magnetized flow. The research has observable consequences on black holes on the whole mass scale, in particular it is related to the time-scale and shape of luminosity flares in Sgr A* or to the evolution of QPO frequency during outbursts of microquasars.

Here are reviewed the insights from observations at optical and infrared wavelengths for low mass limits above which stars do not seem to end as luminous supernovae. These insights are: (1) the absence in archived images of nearby galaxies of stellar progenitors of core-collapse supernovae above 16-18 M⊙, (2) the identification of luminous-massive stars that quietly disappear without optically bright supernovae, (3) the absence in the nebular spectra of supernovae of type II-P of the nucleosynthetic products expected from progenitors above 20 M⊙, (4) the absence in color magnitude diagrams of stars in the environment of historic core-collapse supernovae of stars with ⩾20 M⊙. From the results in these different areas of observational astrophysics, and the recently confirmed dependence of black hole formation on metallicity and redshift of progenitors, it is concluded that a large fraction of massive stellar binaries in the universe end as binary black holes.

The population of ultraluminous X-ray sources encompasses accreting compact objects with significantly different masses, from black holes of intermediate mass, to black holes of stellar origin, to neutron stars. Investigating these sources will help us answering crucial questions on the distribution of black hole masses and on mass accretion above the Eddington limit in the local Universe, that have potential implications in other astrophysical areas. In order to perform a detailed investigation of ultraluminous X-ray sources, an accurate modeling of their evolution and multiwavelength emission properties is needed. We report some preliminary results of the activities that we are carrying out at present in this area.

I discuss some of what is known and unknown about the behavior of black hole binary systems in the quiescent accretion state. Quiescence is important for several reasons: 1) the dominance of the companion star in optical and IR wavelengths allows the binary parameters to be robustly determined — as an example, we argue that the longer proposed distance to the X-ray source GRO J1655-40 is correct; 2) quiescence represents the limiting case of an extremely low accretion rate, in which both accretion and jets can be observed; 3) understanding the evolution and duration of the quiescent state is a key factor in determining the overall demographics of X-ray binaries, which has taken on a new importance in the era of gravitational wave astronomy.

We propose searching for isolated stellar-mass black hole (BH) candidates based on the fact that more than 50% of radio pulsars have originated in binary systems, where the other component could have evolved into a BH prior to the second supernova event of the system, which caused its disruption. We selected isolated, relatively young radio pulsars with known parallaxes and proper motions and traced their trajectories back to their presumed birth locations. These locations were then analyzed for possible BH candidates based on the available positional, photometric, and spectral data. We present the first results for 2 pulsars, J0139+5814 and J0922+0638. Seven BH candidates were selected for further analysis.

We study the prospect for Gaia to detect black hole binary systems without the mass transfer from their companion stars. Gaia will be able to discover Galactic black holes without mass accretion by detecting the proper motion of their companion stars. We evaluate the number of such black hole binaries which have the orbital period short enough to be detected by Gaia during its operation, taking into account the binary evolution model.

V404 Cygni went into an outburst again on June 15, 2015 after 26 years of quietness. Soon after the notifications, we started intense optical observation campaign of this source. The spectral index between RC and IC-band was stable over the outburst, whereas that between g′ and RC-band varied violently. With the time domain analysis of the multi-color optical light curves, we successfully decomposed optical variations into three components: highly-variable component (HVC), little-variable component (LVC). The loci of the LVC in the color-color diagram is consistent with that of a single temperature blackbody radiation or a multi-color blackbody radiation from a standard accretion disk, while those of the HVC trace that of power-law spectra.

Since the first investigations into accretion onto black holes, astrophysicists have proposed effective Newtonian-like potentials to mimic the strong-field behavior of matter near a Schwarzschild or Kerr black hole. On the other hand, the fields of neutron stars or black holes in many of the alternative gravity theories differ from the idealized Schwarzschild or Kerr field which would require a number of new potentials. To resolve this, we give a Newtonian-like Hamiltonian which almost perfectly mimics the behavior of test particles in any given stationary space-time. The properties of the Hamiltonian are excellent in static space-times such as the Schwarzschild black hole, but become worse for space-times with gravito-magnetic or dragging effects such as near the Kerr black hole.

Our understanding of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) has come a long way in the past fifty years since their first detection. We now know that GRBs arise in distant galaxies and that there are at least two distinct sub-classes, the long-duration class being produced by some rare massive star core collapse and the short-duration class likely by compact binary mergers involved neutron stars. In both cases, the final remnant will be a stellar-mass black-hole or a massive neutron star. The bursts themselves are associated with ultra-relativistic jetted outflows created by these events, and their afterglows by the impact of these outflows on the surrounding circumburst material. Increasingly GRBs are also being used as probes of the universe, both for understanding galaxy evolution back to the era of reionization, and for the physics of gravitational wave sources. However, many aspects of GRBs remain poorly understood, some pointers to which are given here.

We review the current observational and theoretical status of the polarization measurements of Gamma-ray Bursts at all wavelengths. Gamma-Ray Bursts are thought to be produced by an ultra-relativistic jet, possibly powered by a black hole. One of the most important open point is the composition of the jet: the energy may be carried out from the central source either as kinetic energy (of baryons and/or pairs), or in electromagnetic form (Poynting flux). The polarization properties are expected to help disentangling main energy carrier. The prompt emission and afterglow polarization are also a powerful diagnostic of the jet geometry.

We present the results of numerical particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations of the magnetic field generation and decay in the upstream of collisionless shocks. We use the model, where the magnetic field in the incoming flow is generated by continuous injection of anisotropic electron-positron pairs. We found that the continuous injection of anisotropic plasma in the upstream of the shock-wave generates the large-scale, slowly decaying magnetic field that is later amplified during the passage of the shock front. In our simulations the magnetic field energy reached ~0.01 of the equipartition value, after that it slowly decays on the time scale proportional to the duration of the injection in the upstream. Thus, the magnetic field survives for a sufficiently long time, and supports efficient synchrotron radiation from relativistic shocks, e.g., in GRBs.

Compact binary mergers, with neutron stars or neutron star and black-hole components, are thought to produce various electromagnetic counterparts: short gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) from ultra-relativistic jets followed by broadband afterglow; semi-isotropic kilonova from radioactive decay of r-process elements; and late time radio flares; etc. If the jets from such mergers follow a similar power-law distribution of Lorentz factors as other astrophysical jets then the population of merger jets will be dominated by low-Γ values. The prompt gamma-rays associated with short GRBs would be suppressed for a low-Γ jet and the jet energy will be released as X-ray/optical/radio transients when a shock forms in the ambient medium. Using Monte Carlo simulations, we study the properties of such transients as candidate electromagnetic counterparts to gravitational wave sources detectable by LIGO/Virgo. Approximately 78% of merger-jets result in failed GRB with optical peaks 14-22 magnitude and an all-sky rate of 2-3 per year.

Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) are the most violent explosions in the Universe, releasing a huge amount of energy in few seconds. While our understanding of the prompt and the afterglow phases has increased with Swift and Fermi, we have very few information about their High Energy (HE, E ≲ 100) emission components. This requires a ground-based experiment able to perform fast follow-up with enough sensitivity above ~ 50 GeV. The MAGIC (Major Atmospheric Gamma-ray Imaging Cherenkov) telescopes have been designed to perform fast follow-up on GRBs thanks to fast slewing movement and low energy threshold (~ 50 GeV). Since the beginning of the operations, MAGIC followed-up 89 GRBs in good observational conditions. In this contribution the MAGIC GRBs follow-up campaign and the results which could be obtained by detecting HE and Very High Energy (VHE, E ≳ 100 GeV) γ-rays from GRBs will be reviewed.

In this paper, we focus on studying the high energy emission of GRB 160625B. The lightcurve of prompt emission is composed of three episodes: short-soft precursor, hard main burst, and possible long extended emission. The spectra of first and third episode can be fitted by a multi-color blackbody and cutoff power-law model, respectively. However, the spectrum of second episode was contributed by both multi-color blackbody and cutoff power-law. One can estimate the Lorenz factor of jet of first two episodes by invoking photosphere model as Γ0 ~ 175 and 1694, respectively. It suggests that the ejecta of this case evolved from photosphere dominated initially to internal shock later. On the other hand, the optical emission is very bright during the second episode, which is likely a prompt optical emission. Finally, a more shallower normal decay segment appeared, which is consistent with standard external shock model.

The Lorentz factor (Γ) is an important parameter related to the relativistic jet physics. We study the evolution patterns of Γ within gamma-ray burst (GRB) and active galactic nuclear jets for individual GRB 090168, GRB 140508A, and 3C 454.3. By estimating the Γ values for well-separated pulses in GRBs 090618 and 140508A with an empirical relation derived from typical GRBs, we find that the Γ evolution pattern in the two GRBs are different. The increasing-to-coasting evolution pattern of Γ in GRB 090618 likely indicates that the GRB fireball is still being accelerated in the prompt phase. The clear decrease evolution pattern of Γ in GRB 140508A suggests the deceleration of the fireball components. By deriving the Γ value through fitting their spectral energy distribution in different flares of 3C 454.3, a pattern of Γ-tracking-γ-ray flux is clearly found, likely indicating that the observed gamma-ray flares are being due to the Doppler boosting effect to the jet emission.

High energy photon radiations of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and active galactic nuclei (AGNs) are dominated by their jet radiations. It was suggested that relativistic jets powered by different mass-scale black holes may share the same physical laws. A tight relation among the peak luminosity, the peak photon energy in the νfν spectrum, and the initial Lorentz factor is found for GRBs. With samples of GeV-TeV BL Lacs, FSRQs, and NLS1 galaxies, we show that these sources do not follow this relation. This may be attributed to the jet geometry and continuous/episodic jet as well as radiation physics for different kinds of sources.

Here we report ongoing efforts for an untriggered search of rapid optical transients of various astrophysical and non-astrophysical origins on time scales down to fractions of a second with Mini-MegaTORTORA. Mini-MegaTORTORA is a novel 9-channel wide-field optical monitoring system in operation since 2014 at Special Astrophysical Observatory on Russian Caucasus.