Related papers: Testing SgrA$^*$ with the spectrum of its accretio…
The accretion flow around the Galactic Center black hole Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) is expected to have an electron temperature that is distinct from the ion temperature, due to weak Coulomb coupling in the low-density plasma. We present four…
The analysis of the properties of the X-ray radiation emitted from geometrically thin accretion disks around black holes can be a powerful tool to test General Relativity in the strong field regime. This chapter reviews the state-of-the-art…
Context. The supermassive black hole, Sagittarius (Sgr) A*, in the centre of our Galaxy has the largest angular size in the sky among all astrophysical black holes. Its shadow, assuming no rotation, spans ~ 50 microarcsec. Resolving such…
Advances in VLBI instrumentation now allow wideband recording that significantly increases the sensitivity of short wavelength VLBI observations. Observations of the super-massive black hole candidate at the center of the Milky Way, SgrA*,…
Astrophysical black hole systems are the ideal laboratories for testing Einstein's theory of gravity in the strong field regime. We have recently developed a framework which uses the reflection spectrum of black hole systems to perform…
The Galactic Center is an excellent laboratory for studying phenomena and physical processes that may be occurring in many other galactic nuclei. The Center of our Milky Way is by far the closest galactic nucleus, and observations with…
The interplay between supermassive black holes (SMBHs) and their environments is believed to command an essential role in galaxy evolution. The majority of these SMBHs are in the radiative inefficient accretion phase where this interplay…
The enigmatic radio source Sagittarius A* at the centre of our Galaxy appears to be a low-luminosity version of active galactic nuclei in other galaxies. By analogy with active galactic nuclei models, it has been proposed that Sgr A* may be…
We analyze the parameter estimation accuracy that can be achieved for the mass and spin of SgrA$^\ast$, the SMBH in our Galactic Center, by detecting multiple extremely large mass-ratio inspirals (XMRIs). XMRIs are formed by brown dwarfs…
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a global 230 GHz VLBI array, achieves an angular resolution of ${\approx} 20\,\mu{\rm as}$, sufficient to resolve the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*). This resolution may soon enable…
Based on Bremer et al. (2011) and Eckart et al. (2012) we report on simultaneous observations and modeling of the millimeter, near-infrared, and X-ray flare emission of the source Sagittarius A* (SgrA*) associated with the super-massive…
We have detected substructure within the smooth scattering disk of the celebrated Galactic Center radio source Sagittarius A* (SgrA*). We observed this structure at 1.3 cm wavelength with the Very Long Baseline Array together with the Green…
The super-massive 4 million solar mass black hole (SMBH) SgrA* shows flare emission from the millimeter to the X-ray domain. The nucleus of the Milky Way has properties (stellar cluster, young stars, molecular gas and an accreting SMBH)…
The global structure of optically thin advection dominated accretion flows which are composed of two-temperature plasma around black holes is calculated. We adopt the full set of basic equations including the advective energy transport in…
We analyze deep near-IR adaptive optics imaging as well as new proper motion data of the nuclear star cluster of the Milky Way. The surface density distribution of faint stars peaks within 0.2" of the black hole candidate SgrA*. The radial…
In general relativity, astrophysical black holes are uniquely described by the Kerr metric. Observational tests of the Kerr nature of these compact objects and, hence, of general relativity, require a metric that encompasses a broader class…
Signatures of X-ray reprocessing (reflection) out of an accretion disk are commonly observed in the high-energy spectrum of accreting black holes, and can be used to probe the strong gravity region around these objects. In this paper, we…
We present general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) numerical simulations of the accretion flow around the supermassive black hole in the Galactic centre, Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*). The simulations include for the first time radiative…
In low-luminosity active galactic nuclei like M87$^\ast$ and Sgr A$^\ast$, the accretion flow in the vicinity of the black hole is in the collisionless regime, meaning that the collisional mean free path of charged particles is much larger…
Sgr A* is the unique 1 Jy flat spectrum radio point source located at the dynamical center of the Galaxy and in the very center of the central star cluster. Due to its unusual appearance it has long been speculated that this source is…