Quasars versus Microquasars: Scaling and Particle Acceleration

Abstract

Abstract Quasars and microquasars both contain accreting black holes and power nonthermal double radio sources, but differ in more than their scales: Quasars are proportionally much more efficient accelerators of energetic electrons. The radio luminosity of the double radio sources associated with quasars, reflecting the long-time average of the particle acceleration power, is often 1%–30% of the quasar’s bolometric luminosity; in microquasars the fraction is ≲10−5. This may be explained by the scaling of accretion disk parameters with the black hole mass.