Jets, Disks and Spectral States of Black Holes

Abstract

We show that outflow rates in jets directly depend on the spectral states of black holes. In particular, in soft states, when the Comptonized electrons are cold, outflow rate is close to zero. In hard states, outflow could be steady, but the rate may be very small -- only a few percent of the inflow. In the intermediate states, on the other hand, the outflow rate is the highest -- roughly thirty percent of the inflow. In this case, piled up matter below the sonic surface of the outflow could become optically thick and radiative processes could periodically cool the outflow and produce very interesting effects including transitions between burst (high-count or On) and quiescence (low-count or Off) states such as those observed in GRS 1915+105.