Towards a new generation of reflection models for precision measurements of accreting black holes

Authors

Cosimo Bambi ⋅ CN Department of Physics, Fudan University, China

Abstract

Blurred reflection features are commonly observed in the X-ray spectra of accreting black holes. In the presence of high-quality data and with the correct astrophysical model, X-ray reflection spectroscopy is a powerful tool to probe the strong gravity region of black holes, study the morphology of the accreting matter, measure black hole spins, and test Einstein's theory of General Relativity in the strong field regime. In the past 10–15 years, there has been significant progress in the development of the analysis of these reflection features, thanks to both more sophisticated theoretical models and new observational data. However, the next generation of X-ray missions (e.g. eXTP, Athena, HEX-P) promises to provide unprecedented high-quality data, which will necessarily require more accurate synthetic reflection spectra than those available today. In this talk, I will review the state-of-the-art in reflection modeling and I will present current efforts to develop a new generation of reflection models with machine learning techniques.

About the Speaker

Cosimo Bambi, Department of Physics, Fudan University, China

Cosimo Bambi is currently Xie Xide Junior Chair Professor at the Department of Physics at Fudan University. He received the Laurea degree from Florence University in 2003 and the PhD degree from Ferrara University in 2007. He worked as a postdoctoral research scholar at Wayne State University, IPMU/The University of Tokyo, and LMU Munich. He joined Fudan University at the end of 2012 under the 1000 Young Talents Program. His main research interests focus on theoretical and observational studies on black holes. He has published about 200 papers in high impact factor refereed journals as first or corresponding author, he has over 10,000 citations, and his h-index is 56. He has published several books with Springer, either as author and editor. He has received a number of awards, including the Magnolia Gold Award in 2022 and the Magnolia Silver Award in 2018 from the Municipality of Shanghai, the International Excellent Young Scientists Award from the National Natural Science Foundation of China in 2022, and the Xu Guangqi Prize from the Embassy of Italy in Beijing in 2018.

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Issue

2024: Proceedings of the 42nd Samahang Pisika ng Pilipinas Physics Conference

Article ID

SPP-2024-INV-2A-01

Section

Invited Presentations

Published

2024-07-03

How to Cite

[1]

C Bambi, Towards a new generation of reflection models for precision measurements of accreting black holes, Proceedings of the Samahang Pisika ng Pilipinas 42, SPP-2024-INV-2A-01 (2024). URL: https://proceedings.spp-online.org/article/view/SPP-2024-INV-2A-01.