Przemysław Mróz (Astronomical Observatory, Warsaw University)
Gravitational-wave detectors - LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA - have revealed a population of massive black holes whose origin is still a subject o vigorous debate. Understanding the population of black holes in the Milky Way is therefore of key importance for understanding and putting into the astrophysical context the LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA discoveries. Gravitational microlensing remains the only viable technique which enables us to detect and directly measure masses of isolated stellar remnants, especially neutron stars and black holes. In this talk, I will present the recent advancements in the field of gravitational microlensing, which have led to the discovery of the first isolated stellar-mass black hole in the Milky Way and which will pave the way for future similar discoveries. I will present how astrometric and interferometric observations of gravitational microlensing events allow us to detect and characterize isolated neutron stars and black holes. Finally, I will discuss whether black holes of different sizes can make up dark matter.
Maciek Wielgus (Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, IAA-CSIC, Granada, Hiszpania)
Patrick C. Fragile (Charleston College)
Accretion of gas onto black holes is one of the most important processes shaping our Universe. Understanding extremely high rates of accretion (dubbed `super-Eddington') is vital to explaining the challenging observation that supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are fully formed at redshifts >7. It is also important to understanding astrophysical objects such as tidal disruption events (TDEs) and ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs). While we are able to perform observations of super-Eddington accreting systems, to understand them more fully, we must turn to numerical studies. In this talk, I will present the results of some recent super-Eddington disk simulations and discuss some of the interesting things we are learning.
Bogumił Pilecki (CAMK, Warsaw)
Samik Mitra (Astrophysics and Relativity Group International Centre for Theoretical Sciences, Bengaluru, India)
