Mapping the Extreme Environments Around Black Holes

Spitzer Seminars, California State University, East Bay, Hayward, CA (11/10/2018)
Institute of Astronomy Seminars, University of Cambridge (20/06/2018)

Some of the brightest and most extreme objects we see in the Universe are, powered by matter spiralling into a supermassive black hole in the centre of a galaxy. As matter falls into the black hole, intense radiation is released, outshining the stars in these galaxies and many of these black holes are able to launch jets of particles close to the speed of light that span vast distances out of the galaxy. Many of the physical processes by which vast amounts of energy is released and injected into the surroundings remain a mystery.

Detailed observations of supermassive black holes in Seyfert galaxies with the large X-ray observatories XMM-Newton, Suzaku and NuSTAR, have revealed an unprecedented amount. I will discuss, in particular, how the effects of general relativity imprinted upon X-rays that are reflected from the inner regions of the disc of infalling material provide a unique probe of the extreme environment around the black hole. This lets us map out the innermost regions, just outside the event horizon of the black hole and gives us important insight into the processes by which these extreme systems are powered. We are starting to learn how these processes are governed over long timescales as supermassive black holes played their vital role in the formation of structure we see in the Universe today.