Speaker: Krista Lynne Smith, Ph.D | Associate Professor | Texas A&M University
Date/Time: April 5, 2024 / 12 noon central.
Location: NCSA, 1040.
Zoom: https://illinois.zoom.us/j/82318062756?pwd=M3g1MFF6cytsOWFEbmU0UW1XWVoxQT09
Title: "Space-Time Through the Kaleidoscope: Applying Temporal and Multiwavelength Datasets to Supermassive Black Hole Phenomenology"
Abstract: The space-time distortion caused by supermassive black holes provides a unique laboratory for violent physical processes like stellar tidal disruption, highly relativistic jets, and turbulent accretion flows. Synthesizing observations across many wavelengths and studying their time variability at slow and rapid timescales promises a new, dynamic, thorough understanding of how black holes form and grow, how they consume material, how they construct powerful relativistic jets, and how they bend the evolution of galaxies to a path that matches our observations of the Universe. I will discuss how both high-resolution radio imaging surveys of outflows and star formation and timing observations with breakthrough instruments like the NICER instrument on the ISS and the TESS exoplanet-hunting missions have provided new intersectional insights and promise a fertile new temporal phase space for exploring the detailed phenomenology and cosmological implications of active galactic nuclei. In my talk, I will discuss results from my 22 GHz radio survey of 268 radio-quiet BAT AGN and implications for both the origin of radio emission in non-jetted objects and galaxy-wide star formation suppression. I will also discuss time domain results in progress from my large TESS program, including searching for unique signatures of binary supermassive black holes, the high-energy astrophysics of relativistic jets, and more.