Le 20 mai 2016
De 10h30 à 12h00
William Alston
Cambridge
Understanding accretion of matter onto black holes is one of the biggest contemporary astrophysics challenges. Accretion powers both active galactic nuclei (AGN) and black hole X-ray binaries (BHBs), which provide feedback through jets and winds, as well as being places we can study strong field GR. These objects are known to be highly variable, with the strongest and most rapid variability observed at X-ray energies. In this talk, I will highlight how X-ray timing and spectral-timing methods provide an orthogonal view of the accretion process and help break some of the degeneracies often encountered by X-ray spectral fitting alone. This includes using quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) and X-ray reverberation to map the inner accretion flow.