Transient Phenomena and Outbursts from Galactic Black-Hole Candidates

Abstract

The RossiXTE mission provided us with an unprecedentedly large database of X-ray observations of transient black-hole candidates. These systems are crucial for the understanding of the physical properties of mass accretion onto black holes. Here I review the results on a selected sample of systems and describe their behavior in a purely phenomenological way. From these results, we can derive a better classification of the spectral and timing characteristics of black hole candidates in terms of basic states.