One (disk) ring to rule them all: scaling accretion from YSOs to AGN

by Simone Scaringi (Max Planck for ExtraTerrestrial physics (MPE))

Wednesday 25 Nov 2015, 16:00 → 17:00 Europe/Rome

Aula Conversi (Dipartimento di Fisica - Ed. G. Marconi)

Accretion is the process by which most objects in the Universe grow in mass: from young-stellar objects still in the star-forming process, through accreting white dwarfs and neutron stars, to stellar-mass black holes and supermassive black holes at the centre of galaxies. Although the importance of accretion has been recognised for many years, the detailed physics is still poorly understood. I will discuss the already known similarities between accreting compact objects, and present new phenomenological spectral/timing similarities across all types of accreting systems, compact or not. Recent results quantitatively link the observed X-ray variability in accreting black holes to the optical variability of accreting white dwarfs and young-stellar objects, suggesting a common physical mechanism driving accretion across all mass and size scales, irrespective of the accretor type. I will conclude with future prospects to this field, posing open questions in the context of further unifying accretion on all scales.