Speaker
Description
Sgr A displays intermittent IR and X-ray flaring, possibly due to regions of magnetic reconnection near the event horizon. While this mechanism is favored by both phenomenological modeling and simulations, such methods rely on simplified expressions of the radiating electrons’ energy distribution to model the resulting multiwavelength emission. Rather than this approach, we introduce a new method allowing the electron distribution to vary according to the local plasma conditions. We use a new Bayesian inference framework to directly fit constraints such as Sgr A’s spectrum, variability, polarization measurements, and Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) images. This fitting produces a data-supported model of the emission from possible magnetic reconnection regions, particularly at EHT-observable millimeter wavelengths. The presence – or absence – of such emission in observations can then provide critical evidence to constrain which mechanisms are responsible for Sgr A*’s variability.
| Talk category | NOVA Network 3 |
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