10–14 Nov 2025
Europe/Prague timezone

Probing black hole physics with polarimetry

11 Nov 2025, 14:00
40m
Keynote

Speaker

Maciek Wielgus (Black Hole Initiative, Harvard)

Description

Low luminosity accretion disks around supermassive black holes emit synchrotron radiation all the way to the event horizon. This emission can be probed with very long baseline radiointerferometry. Using this technique, two sources - Sagittarius A and M 87 - were resolved using Event Horizon Telescope at the event horizon scale. In particular, resolved polarized emission from the compact region, constituting a sensitive probe of the magnetic field configuration, was observed. In this talk I will discuss how resolved images of black holes are used to probe the accreting system properties, including black hole spin, plasma velocity profile, and geometry of magnetic field.

Primary authors

Maciek Wielgus (Black Hole Initiative, Harvard) Mr Saurabh Saurabh (Max Planck Institute for Radioastronomy, Bonn)

Presentation materials

There are no materials yet.