Summer School
on
"Black Holes at all scales"

 Ioannina, Greece, 16-19 September 2013

Welcome

Black Holes in a Violent Universe” (MP0905) organized a Summer School on "Black Holes at all scales", in Ioannina, Greece, between September 16 and 18, 2013. The registration was open until August 18, 2013. Limited financial support was available.

The Summer School "Black Holes at all scales" aims at postgraduate students and young postdoctoral fellows. The program includes reviews on various aspects of Black Hole-related science, such as: demographics and formation theories of galactic black hole binaries in our and nearby galaxies, our "own" supermassive black hole on the Galactic center, formation and cosmic evolution of supermassive black holes, phenomenology of active galactic nuclei and a review of their "unification" theories, theory of jet formation and energy extraction in black hole systems, as well as the scaling of accretion and jet physics from mini-quasars to quasars.

Topics and Speakers:

• Black holes in galactic binaries
  Andreas Zezas (University of Crete)

syllabus: Populations of black-hole binaries in our Galaxy (observations and mass spectrum) - Black holes in High mass and Low mass X-ray binaries, persistent and transient sources, duty cycles - Extragalactic X-ray binaries (populations, X-ray Luminosity Functions, Ultra-luminous X-ray sources) - Intermediate mass black holes (formation, observational evidence) - Black-hole binary formation and evolution, constraints from population synthesis models - Cosmological evolution of X-ray binary populations

• Sgr A*- the galactic center black hole
  Andreas Eckart (University of Cologne)

syllabus: Observational methods to study the galactic center - SrgA* and its environment CND/mini-spital/stellar cluster - radio/NIR/X-ray light curves from SgrA* - adiabatic expansion - synchrotron self Compton effect - simultaneous NIR/X-ray flares - polarized emission from SgrA* - relativistic models of the emitting regions - dusty sources in the central few arcseconds

• An introduction to Active Galactic Nuclei
  Paolo Padovani (European Southern Observatory)

syllabus: the discovery of quasars and the beginning of AGN studies - AGN main properties and power source - radio-quiet and radio-loud AGN - the AGN zoo and unified schemes - AGN masses and physical evolution - finding AGN: AGN surveys in various bands - deep radio fields and the radio-quiet/radio-loud dichotomy - the "Big Picture": AGN and galaxy evolution - AGN open questions - useful references

• Formation and cosmic evolution of supermassive black holes
  Debora Sijacki (University of Cambridge)

syllabus: formation of black hole seeds - low mass versus massive scenarios - growth the black holes in early Universe - powering high redshift quasars - relative importance gas accretion and black hole mergers across cosmic time - physical conditions accreting gas - from large scale inflows to accretion disks - black hole binary shrinking mechanisms - black hole spins - gravitational recoils - AGN feedback processes and their impact on host galaxies across the Hubble sequence

• Energy extraction from black holes and the jet formation
  Nektarios Vlahakis (University of Athens)

syllabus: Introduction - Classes of relativistic jets - Observations relevant to jet physics (apparent motion, polarization, Faraday rotation) - Accretion disks and their magnetic field - Unipolar inductors and energy extraction - Magnetohydrodynamic modeling of jets - Bulk acceleration - Collimation - The role of the outflow environment - Jet kinematics

• From quasars to micro-quasars: the physics scaling with the black hole mass
  Sera Markoff (University of Amsterdam)

General introduction to the concept of mass scales in accretion physics - Summary of accretion states in X-ray binaries and comparisons to AGN zoology - Empirical studies of accretion physics scaling over 8 orders of magnitude in mass: Variability studies, the Fundamental Plane of black hole accretion - Theoretical derivations of expected mass scaling - Mass-scaling as a new tool for approaching longstanding questions: jet/disk coupling, particle acceleration, theoretical degeneracies in the modeling of data

The Organizing Committee

E. Angelakis (chair, Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie),
I. Papadakis (University of Crete) and
S. Britzen (Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie).

Local Contact:
N. Petropoulos, A. Dogoriti (Municipality of Ioannina, Mayor’s Office),
L. Themeli (Zosimaia Pedagogiki Akadhmia)