Speaker
Prof.
Erin Kara
Description
In recent years, time-domain surveys have revealed new, transient accretion phenomena that defy all predictions. We witness stars getting ripped apart by black holes (known as Tidal Disruption Events) and Active Galactic Nuclei that suddenly accrete material at rates orders of magnitude faster than disk theory predicts. A key to explaining much of this staggering behavior is to probe close to the black hole, as seen in X- rays. In this talk, I will discuss some recent results on TDEs, changing-look AGN and a newly discovered class of transients, Quasi Periodic Eruptions, all of which are furthering our understanding of the extreme accretion environments around supermassive black holes.
