TSI Seminar

AGN HBT OMG

Neal Dalal

Perimeter Institute

I’ll discuss an old technique called intensity interferometry, pioneered by Hanbury Brown and Twiss (HBT) that allows us to achieve sub-microarcsecond angular resolution using ordinary ground-based optical telescopes observing visible light. This technique is best suited for compact, bright sources, and I will discuss applications of intensity interferometry observations of bright, supermassive black holes called active galactic nuclei (AGN). I’ll describe how this can be used to measure the Hubble constant H0 and probe the innermost structure of AGN accretion disks.