Current and future upgrades of ESO/VLTI and opportunities for supermassive black hole studies

The GRAVITY instrument on the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) has brought significant advancements to infrared interferometry with its high spatial resolution and sensitivity. The ongoing GRAVITY+ project will equip the VLTI with wide-angle phase reference delay lines, state-of-the-art adaptive optics, improved vibration control, and other upgrades. These enhancements will not only greatly improve GRAVITY's performance but also reshape the entire VLTI system. In this talk, I will provide an overview of GRAVITY's technology and scientific achievements, highlight the recent progress of GRAVITY+, and discuss future opportunities for extragalactic supermassive black hole (SMBH) studies. GRAVITY+ will enable accurate measurements of SMBH masses and broad-line region structures for a large sample of AGNs at both low and high redshifts. Additionally, multiwavelength synergetic observations will provide critical data for investigating SMBH accretion, AGN feedback, and the search for SMBH binaries. I will conclude by discussing the prospects for the next-generation VLTI.


Speaker: 
Jinyi Shangguan (PKU)
Place: 
KIAA-auditorium
Host: 
Luis Chi Ho
Time: 
Thursday, October 31, 2024 - 3:30PM to Thursday, October 31, 2024 - 4:30PM
Biography: 
Jinyi Shangguan is now an assistant professor at the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics (KIAA) at Peking University. He got his Ph.D. in 2018 at Peking University, with studies of the interstellar medium of quasar host galaxies. Hereafter he joined the Infrared Group of Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, and has been working on observations and data analyses of the VLTI/GRAVITY interferometer. He uses GRAVITY to study the broad-line region dynamics and hot dust continuum of active galactic nuclei together with multiwavelength observations from other instruments. He joined KIAA in October 2024.