A polarimetric view of black hole accretion flows and jets
- Monika Moscibrodzka, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen
The Event Horizon Telescope is a global effort to construct an
Earth-sized virtual radio telescope array, with the goal to make pictures and
movies of two nearby supermassive black holes. A detailed theoretical
understanding of black hole accretion is now crucial to interpret these
observations. I will review our current efforts to model polarimetric
properties of light produced in synchrotron processes in plasma falling
towards the event horizon. The numerical models are based on general
relativistic magnetohydrodynamics simulations so they are capable of capturing
the complex dynamics of magnetic fields and their interactions with plasma. It is now
important to understand the polarized radiative transfer in these simulations
to correctly predict the observational signatures of the events at the event
horizon scales where the accretion disk and jet are connected.