Research and Publications
During my PhD, I have approached two complementary questions about strong gravity: an observationally motivated question about measuring supermassive black hole spin, and a theoretically motivated question about the stability of extremal black holes. My work in each of these fields combines numerical simulations with analytic tools. The projects below group the main ideas with the associated publications.
See my CV, Google Scholar, and arXiv.
Jet Physics and Black Hole Spin
Relativistic jets carry information about black hole spin, magnetic fields, and plasma acceleration. I developed a method for extracting that information from polarized images. In the near future, this approach should make it possible to constrain the spins and Lorentz factors of roughly 5 to 10 astrophysical systems.
- Signatures of Black Hole Spin and Plasma Acceleration in Jet Polarimetry. II. Off-axis Jets First Author
- Limb-brightened Jet in M87 from Anisotropic Nonthermal Electrons
- Signatures of Black Hole Spin and Plasma Acceleration in Jet Polarimetry First Author
- Relativistic Signatures of Flux Eruption Events near Black Holes First Author
Extremal Black Holes
Extremal black holes pose a challenge to classical gravity because they are known to be linearly unstable to external perturbations. I have developed numerical tools to study the nonlinear endpoint of charged horizon instabilities, finding that these instabilities can be surprisingly long-lived under precise conditions, even when a black hole is not actually present.
Horizon-Scale Imaging and Photon Rings
Black hole images encode spacetime properties through light bending and parallel transport. I have studied how these effects appear in horizon-scale images, especially in the photon ring, where the lensing structure becomes most apparent.
- Black Hole Polarimetry III: Universal Polarization of Synchrotron Radiation at the Horizon
- Polarimetry and Astrometry of NIR Flares as Event Horizon Scale, Dynamical Probes for the Mass of Sgr A*
- Bayesian Accretion Modeling: Axisymmetric Equatorial Emission in the Kerr Spacetime
- Orbital Motion near Sagittarius A*: Constraints from Polarimetric ALMA Observations
- Polarized Image of Equatorial Emission in the Kerr Geometry First Author
- The Polarized Image of a Synchrotron-emitting Ring of Gas Orbiting a Black Hole
- The Role of Adaptive Ray Tracing in Analyzing Black Hole Structure First Author
Radio Astronomy Collaborations
I am a member of the Event Horizon Telescope and Black Hole Explorer collaborations. These interferometric arrays are paving the way toward sharper images of black holes, and my work on polarized image models is directly relevant for interpreting those observations.
