Astro Seminar - "Testing Fundamental Physics with the Event Horizon Telescope'

Lia Medeiros (IAS)

Jan 31, 2023 3:30 PM

Location: Bell Room (Rutherford Physics, room 103) & Zoom
Astro Seminar

Title: Testing Fundamental Physics with the Event Horizon Telescope

Abstract:

New horizon-scale images of the Galactic Center black hole Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) recently published by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) allow for new strong-field tests of the Kerr metric in a previously unexplored regime. I will discuss the recent EHT observations of Sgr A* with a particular focus on how these new results can be used to test fundamental physics. I will briefly touch upon the earlier M87 results as well. I will also discuss future prospects for the EHT including additional telescopes and a shorter wavelength. Finally, I will introduce a new machine-learning algorithm for EHT data analysis that uses a large library of high-fidelity simulations as a training set.