Session B06: Our Neighborly Supermassive Black Holes

Live

Using Very Long Baseline Interferometry at 1.3mm wavelength, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration recently published the first images of a black hole. I will discuss the breakthroughs that made these images possible and their implications for our understanding of supermassive black holes. I will also describe the emerging capabilities of the EHT to study relativistic dynamics of accretion flows, to elucidate the role of magnetic fields in jet launching, and to enable precision tests of General Relativity. Finally, I will discuss how black holes produce unique image signatures that enable a new type of telescope that could image thousands of supermassive black holes.   

Live

The GRAVITY near-IR beam combiner allows very sensitive (K~19), phase-referenced milliarcsec K-band imaging and polarimetry, 20-100 micro-arcsecond broad-band astrometry, and micro-arcsecond differential spectro-astrometry with the combined 4 UT telescopes of the Very Large Telescope of the European Southern Observatory. GRAVITY is a game changer in studying the massive black hole in the Galactic Center, and in active galactic nuclei. I will summarize the highlights of the last two years and report new results in using GRAVITY for tests of General Relativity near a massive black hole.   

Live

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) has produced the first image of the 1.3 mm-wavelength emission around the black hole “shadow” at the heart of M87. The hot plasma in the accretion flow around M87's central black hole illuminates the spacetime, and the flow's magnetic field extracts energy from the black hole to launch famous relativistic jet which is prominent in VLBI images at longer wavelengths. General relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) simulations are a powerful tool for studying the accretion flow and jet in M87 and Sgr A*. I will discuss the library of these simulations used by the EHT collaboration to constrain the properties of the black hole and emitting plasma in M87. Linking total intensity and polarimetric images from these simulations to VLBI images at multiple wavelengths will constrain the physics of the jet launching region and reveal the geometry and dynamics of the magnetic field near the event horizon.