NRAO/Socorro Colloquium Series: 07 December 2001

Fulvio Melia

Department of Physics
University of Arizona, Tucson


Polarimetric Imaging of the Black Hole at the Galactic Center


Most of the dark matter at the Galactic center is concentrated within 0.015 pc, and is coincident with the radio point source Sgr A*. The evidence now points to this being a 2.6 million solar mass object. Beyond trying to model its emission characteristics, it is worth thinking about the possibility of utilizing its relative proximity in order to test the predictions of General Relativity in the strong field limit. Surprising as this may seem, we are now at the stage where we can begin to ask questions such as "Is there really an event horizon in this source?" since the VLBI resolution is rapidly approaching a scale commensurate with its actual size. We will discuss the nature of this source, its emissivity, and view illustrative images of both the unpolarized and polarized radiation at millimeter and sub-millimeter wavelengths, which appears to originate from within the inner five to ten Schwarzschild radii.






Friday, 07 December 2001
11:00am

Array Operations Center Auditorium

Local Host: Miller Goss


Other NRAO/Socorro colloquia


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