Title：Black hole jets: confronting theory with observations

Speaker：Feng Yuan (Department of Physics, Fudan University)

Time：3:00 pm Sep. 26th (Thursday)

Tencent Meeting：42915400486 password: 6360

Location: Lecture Hall, 3rd floor

Abstract：

The formation of jets in black hole accretion systems is a long-standing problem. It has been proposed that a jet can be formed by extracting the rotation energy of the black hole (“BZ-jet”) or the accretion flow (“BP-jet”). But both jet models are purely dynamical and it is unclear whether they can reproduce the various observational results of jet. By performing general relativistic MHD simulations and considering electron acceleration by magnetic reconnection, we have calculated predicted images by the two models and compared them to millimeter observations of the jet in M87. We find that the BZ-jet originating from a magnetically arrested disk around a high-spin black hole can well reproduce the observations, including jet width and limb-brightening feature, while BP-jet cannot. The physical origin of reconnection is discussed.

CV：

Feng Yuan got his PHD in University of Science and Techonology of China in 1997. After that he has pursued postdoctoral research in Nanjing Univeristy, Max-Planck Institute of Radio Astronomy, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and Purdue University, before he moved back to China in 2005 and worked in Shanghai Astronomical Observatory. Since 2024 he is a professor in Fudan Univeristy and serves as the director of Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics of Fudan University. His main research interests focuse on black hole astrophysics, including theory of black hole accretion and outflow, AGN, and galaxy formation and evolution. He has published over 200 papers in refereed journals and these papers have received more than 20000 citations.