Disks, jets, and other black hole-powered transients

Alexander Tchekhovskoy (Northwestern)

April 08, 2019

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Abstract: Black holes are responsible for a wide variety of astrophysical phenomena. They devour stars, eject relativistic jets, affect star formation and galaxy evolution, and enrich the Universe with heavy elements. I will discuss how global general relativistic magnetized fluid dynamics numerical simulations allow us to use this activity to quantitatively probe strong-field gravity and constrain black hole physics in various astrophysical contexts. In particular, I will show how the use of graphics processing units (GPUs) has advanced such simulations and how GPUs turn your desktop into an equivalent of a thousand-core computational cluster.