Candidate: Jeremy Flannery
Norbert WernerNorbert Werner is the leader of the “Lendület Hot Universe” research group at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary, an associate professor (Docent) in the Department of Theoretical Physics and Astrophysics at the Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic, and a specially appointed associate professor in the School of Science at Hiroshima University, Japan.
The values of neutrinos’ masses and the force driving the accelerated expansion of the Universe are some of the unknown in physics.
I will discuss the optically thick models of accretion, including analytic models such as Shakura-Sunyaev's thin disk solution, slim disks and geometrically thick disks. I will talk about their properties, such as stability, angular momentum transport, and the importance of radiation.
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) has produced the first image of the 1.3 mm-wavelength emission around the black hole “shadow” at the heart of M87. Because the EHT's dynamic range is currently limited, this image does not show emission from the famous relativistic jet which is prominent in VLBI images at longer wavelengths. I will discuss how large-scale numerical simulations connect VLBI images of the shadow at 1.3 mm to images of the jet at longer wavelengths and constrain the physics of the jet launching region.
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration released the first image of black hole in April of this year, opening the field of horizon-scale study of the spacetime and environments around black holes via direct imaging. The radio image, taken at a wavelength of 1.3 mm (230 GHz) and using the technique of very-long-baseline interferometry, matches that of lensed photons from relativistic magnetized plasma surrounding a 6.5 billion solar mass black hole at the center of M87.
Different modes of stellar feedback play different roles within galaxies. We study the role of supernovae, an historically popular choice, on the evolution of galaxies and their stellar content. We argue that prior work has modeled supernovae poorly by ignoring stellar clustering and also the key physics of conduction that governs hot gas evolution. Clustered supernovae create superbubbles, kpc-scale feedback events that can drive strong galactic winds.
Editor, Physical Review Letters (APS)
In a talk that I am hoping will quickly morph into a free-flowing Q and A session, I will discuss the role that PRL plays in disseminating your physics results. The process is a cascading sequence that entails interacting with journal editors, referees, conference chairs, journalists, department chairs, deans, funding agencies, and others. The tools, however, have changed in recent years; the arrival of social media, search engines, and electronic repositories have us in a state of flux. PRL published its first paper 60 (plus 1) years ago. Let's look back and forward.
I will give a theory-centered overview of the results from the Dark Energy Survey, an experiment mapping the large-scale structure in order to better understand the cause of the accelerated expansion of the universe. Year-1 DES analyses published in 2017/18 included the combination of galaxy clustering, cosmic shear, and their cross-correlation to impose constraints on key cosmological parameters, while the imminent Year-3 and, later, Year-6 analyses will dramatically improve those constraints.
Some accretion disks surrounding supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei (AGN) are observed to host powerful water vapor maser emission. These astrophysical masers -- dubbed "megamasers" because of their large luminosities relative to Galactic counterparts -- have proven to be unique tools for studying the geometry and dynamics of AGN accretion disks on sub-parsec scales, where the black hole dominates the gravitational potential. The masing gas parcels act as test particles in thi