[Seminar] "Revealing the nature of black holes using the quantum nature of light"

Speaker

Professor Matthew Middleton, Director of the Southampton Space Institute Deputy Head of School (Education), School of Physics and Astronomy University of Southampton

Title

"Revealing the nature of black holes using the quantum nature of light"

Abstract

Black holes are the most exotic objects in the known universe; yet even though they are immensely compact - taking up at most  ~10¹⁰ km for the largest supermassive black holes (around the diameter of the solar system out to Neptune) - they are collectively responsible for affecting change on truly cosmic scales. They can do this by accreting plasma which generates and entrains magnetic fields,  and then launching powerful jets of material away from the black hole at nearly the speed of light. Such jets are thought to tap the angular momentum (spin) of the black hole via the Blandford-Znajek effect (a modification of the Penrose process). It is perhaps unsurprising then that there has been a great deal of effort expended on trying to access black hole spin, and which is typically estimated by modelling the energy-dependent shape of the X-ray emission from plasma close to the black hole. In this seminar, I will present the current status of the field, and how accessing the quantum properties of the X-rays from accreting plasma could revolutionise our ability to access black hole spin.