In the light of black holes - Accretion discs, coronae and jets around accreting black holes

My research is about studying the radiation (essentially hard X-rays) coming from accreting black holes (AGNs and X-ray binaries) with the aim of extracting information about the physical conditions in their immediate vicinity. The main questions I am trying to answer are: What is the structure and geometry of the accreting material close to the black hole ? How does it changes with mass accretion rate ? What is the nature of the connection between accretion processes and the formation of jets observed in those systems ? My approach is centred on a detailed comparison of the observations with the predictions of various models. I present the efforts I have been pursuing for almost ten years in order to develop powerful numerical simulation tools for radiative transfer in the hot X-ray emitting plasma surrounding compact objects. I show how these tools have been used to model the high energy continuum and variability of accreting black holes and constrain the structure of the accretion flow. I also present results based on the analysis and interpretation of observations performed with space-based X-ray and gamma-ray telescopes such as XMM and INTEGRAL as well as simultaneous multi-wavelength observations.