Events

Anna Ciurlo (Astronomy)
UCLA

Title: The Environment of a Supermassive Black Hole in High Resolution at the Galactic Center

Abstract: The center of our Galaxy hosts the closest supermassive black hole to Earth. This gives us the unique opportunity of studying in high-resolution the processes of accretion and the effect of the black hole on its environment. The galactic black hole is not very active at present, but at about 1 pc there is a large reservoir of material that will eventually trigger a more intense phase of activity. Smaller-scale processes can also accrete material onto the black hole producing short peaks in activity. Here, I present the structure and dynamics of the interstellar medium from the parsec to sub-parsec scale and how each component potentially contributes to the accretion flow and trace the influence of the black hole on stars and clouds. In particular, I will highlight the  unexpected presence of molecular hydrogen in the central parsec (where the strong UV field is supposed to dissociate it) and the unveiling of several dust-enshrouded objects, orbiting close to the central black hole. The latter include the “G objects”, likely the dusty product of binary mergers, and X7 a tidally stretching gas cloud possibly ejected by a stellar collision.

Bio: Anna is an assistant researcher at the University of California Los Angeles, in the Galactic Center Group. She was an inaugural Keck Visiting Scholar. Anna obtained her PhD in astrophysics from the Paris Observatory (Université Sorbonne Paris Cité, France). She got her M.S. and B.S. degrees in physics at the University of Genoa (Italy) in conjunction with Université Pierre et Marie Curie (France) and Stockholm University (Sweden), supported by the Erasmus Student and Placement programs.