Speaker
Description
Black hole jets are a challenging puzzle, as they require insights over a range of scales impossible to capture with any one method. Somehow effects playing out at galactic scales are rooted in microphysical processes occurring just outside an event horizon, that somehow also determine the formation of special regions where particle acceleration preferentially occurs. Thanks to global very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) projects like the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) and Global mm-VLBI Array (GMVA), we are finally gaining access to regions we could only dream of directly imaging decades ago when many key questions were formulated about jets. But high-precision imaging is not enough to break the many degeneracies inherent in the models. In this talk I will review recent progress where precision VLBI imaging, in combination with new multi-wavelength constraints and modelling techniques, is helping to address a range of questions regarding accretion physics and geometry, jet launching, and the origin of high-energy flares. I will also discuss the prospects as we move into an era of dynamical imaging as well as more sensitive high-energy facilities such as the Cherenkov Telescope Array.
