Modeling Plasmas Around Black Holes

Astrophysical black holes are surrounded by a hot plasma and magnetic fields. The highest resolution observations, such as those recently presented by the Event Horizon Telescope and Gravity at the VLT allow us now to see this magnetized plasma on black hole event horizon scales but our understanding of what we see relies on first-principles numerical models and their limitations. Those regions around black holes which are highly magnetized are particularly difficult to simulate using existing numerical tools because of the number and complexity of physical processes that need to be accounted for and coupled together.

The goal of the workshop is to establish a new research program for next-generation calculations implementing more accurate plasma physics, particle acceleration, and radiation. The workshop will gather experts in the field of computational astrophysics to tackle outstanding problems in numerical modeling of black hole magnetospheres.