The Physics of
Accreting Black Holes

My research focuses on the immediate vicinty of accreting black holes. Exploring questions such as:

  • How does the vicinity of a black hole look like?
  • How is a fraction of the gravitational energy converted into radiation in the accretion process?
  • How are relativistic jets created?
To find answers, I use the power of X-ray satellite observations combined with supporting multi-wavelength data. I have also been involved in the development of new spectral models.

accreting black hole

Selected Publications

For a complete and up-to-date list of my publications, see my ADS listing.

Experimental Relativity with Accretion Disk Observations

A careful investigation of just how difficult it would be conclusively detect deviation from General Relativity using the accretion disk spectrum.

Properties of AGN coronae in the NuSTAR era

In our paper we discuss what the growing number of coronal temperature measurements in AGN can tell us about the importance of pair production in the corona.

The Corona of the Broad-line Radio Galaxy 3C 390.3

We investigate the Comptonization spectrum of the radio galaxy 3C 390.3 from a joint Suzaku/NuSTAR observation. Studying optical/UV data provided by Swift-UVOT, we determine that the compactness of the corona allows only a small part of the total UV/optical flux to be upscattered into the X-ray band.