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A Clash of Clusters Provides New Clue to Dark Matter
Special ACKS Seminar: Dragan Huterer
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ACKS Seminar: P. Chris Fragile (College of Charleston)
| What | ACKS |
|---|---|
| When |
06 March 08 from 04:00 pm to 05:00 pm |
| Where | CAMPUS: Phys & Astrophys Bldg., 1st fl., conf rm (102/103) |
| Contact Name | Lukasz Stawarz |
| Contact Email | stawarz@slac.stanford.edu |
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Tilted Accretion Disks around Rapidly Rotating Black Holes
One of the more interesting predictions of general relativity is that a rotating black hole actually drags spacetime around it, such that it is impossible for an inertial observer to remain at a constant coordinate location in the vicinity of such a black hole. One consequence of this is that particles orbiting the rotating (or Kerr) black hole in inclined (or tilted) orbits will experience torques that will cause their orbital angular momentum axes to precess about the black-hole spin axis. There is a strong radial dependence to this precession, such that if we think of a disk initially composed of concentric rings of tilted particle orbits, the disk will undergo differential warping. In a real disk this warping must compete with internal stresses within the disk that tend to resist warping. In this talk I will discuss two limiting cases for how such warps propagate in the disk. I will also show results of state-of-the-art numerical simulations that are designed specifically to address this topic, including very recent simulations aimed at studying the jets associated with tilted disks. I will also briefly review some of the observational evidence that exists for tilted and warped disks and some future diagnostics that could be used to study them.
MASS: Lance Simms