Black hole accretion

Ramesh Narayan

Harvard University

Friday, April 7, 2017

3:00pm

NW17-218

PSFC Seminars

Accretion of gas on black holes powers many energetic phenomena in the universe. The accretion power generally comes out as radiation, but sometimes also as relativistic jets. The highly non-linear physics of black hole accretion has become amenable to theoretical study with the development of numerical tools to simulate multi-dimensional radiation MHD flows in general relativistic space-times. However,    poor understanding of the underlying plasma processes is a severe bottleneck. This problem needs urgent attention as astrophysicists gear up to make the first direct image of the accretion flow around the black hole at the center of our Galaxy.