The Black Hole Photon Ring

Add to your list(s) Download to your calendar using vCal

• Alexandru Lupsasca (Princeton)
• Friday 04 March 2022, 13:00-14:00
• Zoom.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Prahar Mitra.

The photon ring is a narrow ring-shaped feature, predicted by General Relativity but not yet observed, that appears on images of sources near a black hole. It is caused by extreme bending of light within a few Schwarzschild radii of the event horizon and provides a direct probe of the unstable bound photon orbits of the Kerr geometry. I will review the origin and structure of the photon ring, before discussing the prospects for its detection. I will argue that the precise shape of the observable photon ring is remarkably insensitive to the astronomical source profile and can therefore be used as a stringent test of strong-field General Relativity. A space-based interferometry experiment targeting the photon ring of M87 * could test the Kerr nature of the source to the sub-percent level. I will discuss a NASA proposal to launch such a mission before the end of the decade.

This talk is part of the DAMTP Friday GR Seminar series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• All CMS events
• All Talks (aka the CURE list)
• CMS Events
• Cosmology lists
• Cosmology, Astrophysics and General Relativity
• DAMTP Friday GR Seminar
• DAMTP info aggregator
• Interested Talks
• Kavli Institute for Cosmology Talk Lists
• Priscilla
• School of Physical Sciences
• Zoom
• bld31

Note that ex-directory lists are not shown.