Talks

Quasars are highly biased tracers of the large-scale structure and therefore powerful probes of the initial conditions and the evolution of the universe. However, current spectroscopic catalogues are relatively small for studying the clustering of quasars on large-scales and over extended redshift ranges. Hence one must resort to photometric catalogues, which include large numbers of quasars identified using imaging data but suffer from significant stellar contamination and systematic uncertainties. I will present a detailed analysis of the photometric quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and the resulting constraints on the quasar bias and primordial non-Gaussianity. The constraints on $f_{rm NL}$, its spectral index, and $g_{rm NL}$, are the tightest ever obtained from a single population of quasars or galaxies, and are competitive with the results obtained with WMAP, demonstrating the potential of quasars to complement CMB experiments. These results take advantage of a novel technique, 'extended mode projection', to mitigate the complex spatially-varying systematics present in the survey in a blind and robust fashion. This work is a new step towards the exploitation of data from the Dark Energy Survey, Euclid and LSST, which will require a careful mitigation of systematics in order to robustly constrain new physics.

Christiann Brinkerink, Radboud University Nijmegen

What closure phase measurements at 86 GHz can tell us about Sagittarius A*

Thomas Bronzwaer, Radboud University Nijmegen

Predicted VLBI Observables for SMBH's Based on GRMHD Simulations

Alejandro Cardenas-Avendano, Universidad Nacional de Colombia

Probing the Regular Nature of the Spacetime by Measuring the Shadow of a Black Hole

Andrew Chael, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Maximum Entropy Polarimetric Imaging

Laura Chajet, York University

AGNs: Line Width Distribution of MHD Disc Winds

Pierre Christian, Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

complimentary observations to the EHT for understanding strong gravity

Riley Connors, University of Amsterdam

Jet Physics Across the Black Hole Mass Scale: Sgr A* and A0620-00

Roger Deane, University of Cape Town

Extreme Interferometry with MeqTrees: advanced interferometric simulation and analysis

Salome Dibi, Radboud University Nijmegen

The emission mechanisms from Sgr A*’s inner gravitational radii

Ciriaco Goddi, Radboud University Nijmegen

mm-VLBI in Europe

Svetlana Jorstad, Boston University

Linear Polarization in the Jet of the Quasar 3C279 at near-EHT resolution 

Motoki Kino, Korea Astronomy & Space Science Institute

Magnetic field strength at the jet base of M87

Michael Landry, LIGO Hanford Observatory

Advanced LIGO status

Alan Marscher, Boston University

Linear Polarization at 1 mm as a Probe of the "Core" of Blazar Jets

Gisela Ortiz, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

Testing a 3 mm VLBI system at the Large Millimeter Telescope: Observations of Sgr A*.

Percy Paul, University of Saskatchewan

Gravity Waves in RS models

Hung-Pi Pu, Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy & Astrophysics

Semi-analytical GRMHD jet model and its Synchrotron Image on Horizon Scale

Angelo Ricarte, Yale University

Probing Strong Gravity and Accretion Physics with the Event Horizon Telescope

Frank Roelofs, Radboud University Nijmegen

imaging Sgr A* through time-variability

Eduard Ros, Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy

Jet formation region of NGC 1052 with mm-VLBI

Fumie Tazaki, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan

super-resolution images of M87 with compressed sensing