General Relativity & Quantum Cosmology

Gravitational waves will allow scientists to test Einstein?s theory of General Relativity in the previously unexplored strong-field regime. Einstein?s theory of general relativity, as the most accepted theory of gravity, has been greatly constrained in the quasi-linear, quasi-stationary regime, where gravity is weak and velocities are small. Gravitational waves may carry information about highly dynamical and strong-field gravity that is required to generate measurable waves. Coalescing compact binaries are the most promising sources of gravitational waves accessible to ground-based interferometers, such as Advanced LIGO. Made of neutron stars and/or black holes that orbit each other hundreds of times a second just before they collide, the resulting waves are imprinted with information about the individual objects and the dynamical coalescence process. After reviewing the basic properties of gravitational waves, I will present an overview of the detector design and provide an update on the current status of Advanced LIGO and its ability to probe the strong gravity regime.

Some 40 years ago Hawking showed that if the black hole has a smooth horizon, then information will be lost when the black hole radiates. In string theory black holes appear to have a complete set of `hair'; these black hole states are called fuzzballs, and they radiate like normal bodies with no information loss. It was recently argued that structure at the horizon will necessarily feel like a `firewall' to an infalling observer. We will show that this need not be the case, since one can have `fuzzball complementarity' where an approximately smooth horizon appears as a `dual' description.

The radio galaxy M87 is an excellent laboratory for investigating the formation process of the relativistic jet and the production mechanism of high energy particles and photons in the vicinity of super-massive black holes. VLBI observations at 1.3 mm can address at least two issues concerning the fundamental nature of M87. The first is the event-horizon-scale structure of the jet launching region, and another one is the production mechanism of very high energy (VHE; > 100 GeV) photons at there. In this talk, I report on new 1.3 mm VLBI observations of M87 with the EHT during the VHE enhancement in 2012. These observations provide the first measurements of closure phase, imposing new constraints on accretion-disk/jet models for M87, and also the first constraints on the innermost structure of the relativistic jet on scales of a few Rs during VHE variability. I discuss results and their implications for jet/disk models and also VHE models for M87, as well as future prospects of EHT observations of M87.

Because of the existence of a prominent jet, M87 provides an ideal source with which the EHT can critically test current jet launching paradigms. The EHT has already placed weak limits on the black hole spin based on generic arguments regarding limits on the image size. However, careful modeling of the jet structure can produce much more stringent constraints on both the black hole properties and the mechanisms responsible for the generation of the observed radio emission. I will describe how this modeling is performed, what the remaining chief uncertainties are and why we believe they can be controlled, and how existing EHT observations of M87 support models of electromagnetically launched jets powered by black hole spin.

VLBI observations at the highest possible frequency penetrate the opacity barrier in the nuclear regions of radio-galaxies and blazars, which are synchrotron self-absorbed at longer wavelength. This facilitates a direct and sharper than ever view into the 'heart' of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), into region in which BH physics and general relativity effects become important and where radio jets are launched. Here we report on new results from global 3mm and 1.3mm VLBI observations adding the APEX and IRAM to the Event Horizon Telescope. New images and core size estimates for a number of AGN jets and for Sgr A* are presented and discussed.

Mass accretion rate on the SMBHs is one of the fundamental parameters used to investigate AGNs. Faraday Rotation Measure (RM) observations at mm/sub-mm wavelengths is one of the powerful methods to derive the mass accretion rate of hot accretion flows towards our galactic center, Sgr A* (e.g., Marrone et al. 2006). Based on this scheme, we conducted an SMA observation to apply this method to M 87, which is one of the primary target for our submm VLBI observations, in February 2013. We succeeded to derive an RM of (2.1 ± 1.8) × 10^5 rad m^-2, it gives the range of the mass accretion rate (M_dot) between 0 and 9.2 × 10^-4 M_sun yr^-1 at the distance of 21 rs from the SMBH. Our estimated M.is already two orders of magnitude smaller than the M_dot at the outer part of the accretion flow (~10^5 r_s) of 0.1 M_sun yr^-1 determined by X-ray observations (Di Matteo et al. 2003). This significant suppression of the M_dot at the inner region is expected with the radiatively inefficient accretion flow (RIAF) model. With future submm VLBI polarimetry towards jetted sources including M 87, we will derive the profile of accretion flow along the jet. It is very important itself for the study of the accretion process onto the SMBH, but also provide fundamental properties to derive BH parameters from the BH shadow imaging.

The super-massive black hole in the center of the Milky Way, Sgr~A*, displays a nearly flat radio spectrum which is typical for jets in Active Galactic Nuclei. Indeed, time-dependent, magnetized models of radiatively inefficient accretion flows, which are commonly used to explain emission of Sgr A* also often produce jet-like outflows. However, the emission from these models so far has failed to reproduce the flat radio spectrum. We show that current GRMHD simulations can naturally reproduce the flat spectrum, when using a two-temperature plasma in the disk and a constant electron temperature plasma in the jet. This assumption is consistent with current state-of-the art simulations, in which the electron temperature evolution is not explicitly modeled. The model images and spectra are consistent with the radio sizes and spectrum of Sgr~A*. The model can also reproduce the radio images of the jet base in M87.

Stellar dynamical measurements of black hole masses have become the de facto standard method. I will give a brief review of how this measurement method works, along with arguments for its overall reliability and caveats. Then I will turn my attention to the case of the black hole in M87. The black hole is undeniably large ? billions of solar masses ? but has a stellar dynamical mass measurement in disagreement with gas dynamical mass measurements at about the 2 sigma level. I will discuss potential systematic uncertainties in both measurements and avenues to reconciling the discrepancy.

We examine the structure and dynamics of the M87 jet based on both multi-frequency observations and MHD jet theories. Millimeter (mm) VLBI cores are considered as innermost jet emissions. Resolved parabolic streamline may suggest that the jet collimation maintains in five orders of magnitude in the distance starting from the vicinity of the supermassive black hole (SMBH), less than 10 r_s where the VLBI core at 1.3 mm is located. Observed sub-to-superluminal motions may indicate an MHD acceleration takes place from non-relativistic to relativistic regimes. We discuss that the M87 jet consists hybrid spine/sheath structure from either a spinning super massive black hole and or radiatively inefficient accretion flow. Future sub-mm VLBI imaging play an essential role in resolving the origin (i.e., formation mechanism) of the M87 jet as well as constraining the SMBH spin parameter. Based on our understanding of M87, we also discuss about the key science in other AGN jets with sub-mm VLBI experiments.

Both the continuum-fitting and Fe-line methods of measuring black hole spin will be discussed and compared, with attention to sources of systematic error. Both methods rely on estimating the inner radius of the black hole's accretion disk and identifying it with the radius of the ISCO. The Fe-line method is extremely important because of its dominant role in measuring the spins of supermassive black holes, which is problematic for the continuum-fitting method. Meantime, both methods are applicable to stellar-mass black holes, and we will discuss current efforts to cross-check the spins of individual black holes. Finally, a comprehensive summary of spin results for both stellar-mass and supermassive black holes will be presented.