Calendar

Organized By:

David Jerison, Paul Seidel, Nike Sun (MIT)
Denis Auroux, Mark Kisin, Lauren Williams, Horng-Tzer Yau, Shing-Tung Yau (Harvard)

Registration

Speakers:

Svetlana Jitomirskaya (University of California)
Subash Khot (NYU)
Jun Li (Stanford)
Andre Neves (University of Chicago)
Geordie Williamson (University of Sydney)

Talks on Youtube

Dates

Friday, November 22, 2019 Lecture Hall C
Saturday, November 23, 2019 Lecture Hall C

Travel

For directions click here.

Support

Limited funding to help defray travel expenses is available for graduate students and recent PhDs. Please check later for more information.
1. A letter indicating your name, address, current status, university affiliation, citizenship, and area of study. F1 visa holders are eligible to apply for support.
2. If you are a graduate student, please send a brief letter of recommendation from a faculty member to explain the relevance of the conference to your studies or research.

Sponsor

The event is sponsored by the National Science Foundation NSF, Harvard University and MIT

Hotels

For travel information, click here.
Sheraton Commander
16 Garden Street, Cambridge MA 02138
telephone: (617) 547-4800
hotel-Harvard campus: 5-10 minute walk
Irving House
24 Irving St., Cambridge MA 02138
telephone: (617) 547-4600,
hotel-Harvard campus: 5-10 minute walk
Friendly Inn(B + B)
1673 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA 02138
telephone: (617) 547-7851
hotel-Harvard campus: 5-10 minute walk
Courtyard Marriott Cambridge
777 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139 USA
617-492-7777, 1-800-321-2211
15-minute walk to Harvard Square,
Free shuttle to Harvard
Hotel Tria
220 Alewife Brook Pkwy
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138-1102
(617) 491-8000, outside Harvard Square.
10 minute walk to public transportation
Free Shuttle bus to Harvard

Information

Please address any questions to Maureen Armstrong at cdm@math.harvard.edu

Last update: Last update: August 17, 2019.

“Harvard University is committed to maintaining a safe and healthy educational and work environment in which no member of the University community is, on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity, excluded from participation in, denied the benefits of, or subjected to discrimination in any University program or activity. More information can be found here“.

The Event Horizon Telescope image of the supermassive black hole in the galaxy M87 is dominated by a bright, unresolved ring. General relativity predicts that embedded within this image lies a thin “photon ring,” which is composed of an infinite sequence of self-similar subrings that are indexed by the number of photon orbits around the black hole. The subrings approach the edge of the black hole “shadow,” becoming exponentially narrower but weaker with increasing orbit number, with seemingly negligible contributions from high order subrings. In the talk, I will discuss the structure of the photon ring, starting with non-rotating black holes, and then proceeding to the complex patterns that emerge when rotation is taken into account. Subsequently I will argue that the subrings produce strong and universal signatures on long interferometric baselines. These signatures offer the possibility of precise measurements of black hole mass and spin, as well as tests of general relativity, using only a sparse interferometric array.