Multi-wavelength study of the microquasar GRS 1915+105 and of high-energy binary sources in the Galaxy

This work is devoted to the study of the microquasars, high-energy binary sources located in our Galaxy, morphologically analogous to quasars, but on length and mass scales considerably smaller. The first part concerns one of the best representatives of the family of the microquasars: GRS 1915+105, discovered by the WATCH/GRANAT telescope, and exhibiting apparently superluminal motions. We first established the galactic nature of this source, located at a distance of 12.5 +/- 1.5 kpc, from millimeter observations. Our infrared observations of this source showed that it exhibited significant variations, from 1 to 2 magnitudes, on variable time scales. It appears that GRS 1915+105 is a luminous and high-mass binary system, in which the compact object, certainly a black hole, is surrounded by an optically thick accretion disk. Simultaneous multi-wavelength observations allowed us to better constrain and unravel the link between matter accretion and ejection phenomena occuring around the compact object. These observations, establishing the microquasar model, show that the morphological analogies existing between quasars and microquasars are created by dynamics and physics. Finally, using millimeter observations, we analyzed the effect of likely interactions between energetic ejections of this source and the surrounding interstellar medium. In the second part of this work, I report a study on some high-energy sources, for which we have identified and/or studied the infrared and radio counterparts. This study shows that the compact objects, black holes or neutron stars, in low mass binary systems, undergo the largest variations in the infrared.