Accretion and jets in microquasars and active galactic nuclei

Black holes from stellar to galactic scales are observed to accrete material from their environments and, via an as yet unknown mechanism, produce jets of outflowing plasma. In X-ray binaries (XRBs), the systems display radically different radiative properties depending on the amount of captured gas reaching the event horizon. These modes of behavior (one of which includes "microquasars") correspond to actual physical changes in the environment near the black hole and can occur on timescales of days to weeks. Some of this behavior should hold true for active galactic nuclei (AGN) if the underlying physics scales with central mass and accretion power, as would be expected if black holes can be characterized mainly by their mass and local environment. However, the timescales on which changes occur should be inversely proportional to the mass. Recent studies support that this scaling applies in some cases, opening the way for comparisons of different stages of time-dependent behavior in microquasars to different classes of AGN zoology. In this distinctly jet-biased review, I will summarize our current understanding of accretion and outflow in these systems and present some of the newest progress addressing unanswered questions about the nature of the accretion flows, jet formation, and jet composition.