APT3 - Observations from High Energy Astrophysics Satellites |
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Speaker |
Markoff, Sera |
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Talk Title |
Mass-scaling accretion and ejection in black holes |
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Abstract |
The physicist J. Wheeler is famous for saying "Black holes have no hair", i.e., once you know a black hole's mass, spin and charge, it should be (astronomically anyway) indistinguishable from another black hole with the same quantities. But what about the physics occurring around black holes during the accretion process: does it scale predictably as a function of mass? If so, it would provide a welcome new handle on several currently outstanding problems in accretion theory, allowing us to study the issue at vastly different dynamical timescales. On the other hand, environmental differences could play a major role, dominating useful scalings. I will first summarize the current evidence from observations for mass scaling in black hole accretion, focusing on broadband spectral behavior. Then I will end with some recent examples of how we are exploiting such scalings to learn more about particularly the jet physics relevant to particle acceleration and eventually AGN feedback. |
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