Place: Buenos Aires, Argentina
In the past decade, a series of seven workshops devoted to the study
of microquasars -accreting compact objects with relativistic jets-
have been held in various locations every two years. The series of
workshops have resulted in a significant increase of our knowledge
of relativistic jets from galactic sources. From the first detection
of superluminal ejections, we now have observed the presence of jets
in a large number of neutron-star and black-hole binaries and even
in cataclysmic variables. Massive young stellar objects are also
known to generate jets and, at their endpoints, non-thermal emission
has been detected.
The availability of powerful facilities at all wavelengths has
allowed to probe the connection between the accretion of plasma
onto the central object (observed in the X-ray band) and the
emission of jets (as observed in the infrared and radio bands).
The field is still in rapid expansion with new space missions
such as AGILE and Fermi already active, and ground-based atmospheric
Cherenkov telescopes like HESS, MAGIC, and VERITAS doing amazing
discoveries, concerning both galactic and extragalactic jets.
In the meanwhile, new missions like ASTROSAT and extensions of the
high-energy telescope arrays like MAGIC II, HESS II, and large-scale
instruments like LOFAR, SKA, ALMA, CTA, and AGIS, along with the
forthcoming neutrino telescopes will increase dramatically our
observational power and will open a wide discovery space for this
research field. Extensive numerical simulations of jets are also
in rapid progress, which helps understanding the physical mechanisms
producing jets.
The time is now ripe to start a detailed comparison of all sources
containing jets such as Microquasars, Active Galactic Nuclei, and
Gamma-Ray Bursts. Both deep theoretical and observational insights
can result from an inter-disciplinary discussion of the fundamental
physics underlying the different objects and phenomena. The Symposium
is aimed at putting the various communities devoted to the study of
relativistic jets in closer contact. The past two workshops, both
titled "Microquasars and Beyond", have shown that this approach can
be very fruitful and that such an exchange would contribute significantly
to the advance of the field. Now it is time to go a step further and to
organize an international Symposium to deal in depth with jet physics
and phenomenology at all scales.
