Monday, March 05, 2018 at 4:00 PM

JILA Auditorium

Jason Dexter, Max-Planck-Institut fur extraterrestrische Physik

"Resolving Black Holes in Space and Time"

Abstract:

The time domain is an exciting frontier for black hole astrophysics. Intrinsic accretion flow variability ranges from stochastic flickering to explosive transients, while reverberation and microlensing of the emission probe its spatial structure. I will show how this diverse set of observations is challenging the widely assumed thin accretion disk paradigm for black hole growth and accretion power in active galactic nuclei. In the Galactic center, two long baseline interferometry experiments can now resolve event horizon scales in both space and time. I will discuss what we might learn about accretion physics and strong gravity from upcoming black hole images and movies.

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