Lunch talk on Jul. 13, 2020

Black hole accretion on event horizon scales 

Speaker: Jordy Davelaar (Radboud University)

Venue: Video conference

Time: 15:00 PM, Monday, Jul. 13, 2020

Abstract: 

In 2019 the first image of the shadow of the supermassive black hole M87* was revealed by the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration. In order to interpret this first image, realistic models that connect the microphysics of the plasma processes to observable source characteristics are crucial. For this task general relativistic magnetohydrodynamical simulations are used which are then post-processed with ray tracing codes to produce synthetic images. One of the key assumption in generating these images is the shape of the underlying electron distribution function. In this talk, I will high-light the most important EHT results and show that our newly developed models are capable of recovering the observable source characteristics of M87*, such as core size, shift and the SED from radio up to NIR.