Magnetic reconnection around black holes: powering bright multiwavelength emission
Alicia Savelli & Braden Gail
CITA/University of Toronto

Accretion disks around black holes, such as those in active galactic nuclei and X-ray binaries, are home to extreme plasma processes that produce bright emission across the electromagnetic spectrum. One such process powering this emission is thought to be magnetic reconnection, the violent restructuring of the magnetic field topology in which magnetic field lines pinch apart and reconnect, converting stored magnetic energy into kinetic energy of the encompassing plasma. In this talk, we will show how magnetic reconnection may be responsible for both high-energy X-ray emission from a hot ?corona? near the central black hole and infrared emission from semi-regular flares in the inner accretion disk. Particularly, we demonstrate how this emission is modelled computationally in (general) relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations, with focus on comparison to observations of Cyg-X1 and Sgr A*, as a step towards unlocking the theory behind these fascinating astrophysical environments.

Date:	Mardi, le 10 février 2026
Heure:	15:30
Lieu:	Université McGill
	Ernest Rutherford Physics, R.E. Bell Conference Room (room 103)