IPMU Colloquium

Speaker: Andy Fabian (Cambridge U.)
Title: 30 years of Relativistic Reflection around Luminous Accreting Black Holes
Date (JST): Mon, May 13, 2019, 15:30 - 17:00
Place: Lecture Hall
Related File: 2311.pdf
Abstract: The most luminous persistent objects in the Universe are accreting supermassive black holes, known as quasars. Our 1989 paper on relativistic reflection showed how X-ray emission lines from the accretion disc appear broad and skew to the distant observer due to gravitational redshift and the Doppler effect. We also noted that time lags - reverberation - should also be detected. Reflection was seen with Ginga, the relativistic broad iron line in 1995 with ASCA and reverberation in 2009 with XMM. X-ray observations of relativistic reflection and reverberation have now become commonplace. After briefly reviewing the history, I will concentrate on recent work which has enabled the geometry of the inner disk and corona to be mapped, so revealing how quasars work.
Seminar Video: [VIDEO]
Remarks: 15:30-16:30 Colloquium
16:30-17:00 Discussion Session