Infrared interferometry is currently in a rapid development phase, with new instrumentation soon achieving milliarcsecond spatial resolutions for faint sources and astrometry on the order of 10 microarcseconds. For jet studies in particular, the next
generation of instruments will bring us closer to the event horizon of supermassive black holes such as Sgr A*, and the region where jet launching must occur. But a new possibility to study microquasars in general and jet physics in particular may also arise, using techniques similar to those employed for finding faint exoplanets around stars. The compact, steady jets observed in the hard state of X-ray binaries display a flat/inverted spectrum from the lower radio wavelengths up through at least the far-IR band. Somewhere above this band, a turnover is predicted where the jets become optically thin, revealing a power-law spectrum. This break may have been observed directly in GX339-4, but in most sources such a feature is likely hidden under bright emission from the stellar companion or accretion disk components. Detecting the exact location of this break would provide a new constraint on our models of jet physics, since the break frequency is dependent on the total power, as well as internal density and magnetic field. Furthermore, knowing the break location combined with the spectral index of the power-law would help constrain the amount of synchrotron emission contributed by the jets to the X-ray bands. Along with a summary of some potential observations requiring less optimal instrumental specifications, I will discuss a technique which may enable us to discern the jet break, and the chances of success based on theoretical models applied to some potential target sources.
We present the results of a broadband simultaneous campaign on the nearby low-luminosity active galactic nucleus M81*. From February through August 2005, we observed M81* five times using the Chandra X-ray Observatory with the High-Energy Transmissio
n Grating Spectrometer, complemented by ground-based observations with the Giant Meterwave Radio Telescope, the Very Large Array and Very Large Baseline Array, the Plateau de Bure Interferometer at IRAM, the Submillimeter Array and Lick Observatory. We discuss how the resulting spectra vary over short and longer timescales compared to previous results, especially in the X-rays where this is the first ever longer-term campaign at spatial resolution high enough to nearly isolate the nucleus (17pc). We compare the spectrum to our Galactic center weakly active nucleus Sgr A*, which has undergone similar campaigns, as well as to weakly accreting X-ray binaries in the context of outflow-dominated models. In agreement with recent results suggesting that the physics of weakly-accreting black holes scales predictably with mass, we find that the exact same model which successfully describes hard state X-ray binaries applies to M81*, with very similar physical parameters.
