Speaker: Jason Dexter (CU Boulder)

Host: Jake Simon

Title: Imaging black holes: accretion physics at the event horizon

Abstract:  In the past few years, it has become possible to image black holes. Long baseline interferometry experiments operating at millimeter and near-infrared wavelengths can now achieve event horizon scale angular resolution with sufficient sensitivity to detect synchrotron radiation from hot plasma near the Galactic center black hole, Sgr A*, and the supermassive black hole in M87. I will discuss major results from each experiment to date, including early efforts to study accretion physics in the immediate vicinity of an event horizon and to determine whether the black holes in the Universe are those predicted by General Relativity