Pedagogical lecture: Formation, Fueling, and Feedback from Supermassive Black Holes
Priyamvada Natarajan (Yale)
In this set of pedagogical lectures aimed at graduate students, I will describe the current status of our understanding of the physics of supermassive black holes focussing on modeling techniques - analytic, numerical and semi-empirical that are guided by observational data. In this primer, I will start with the current theories of the formation of the first seed black holes; the accretion processes that grow these seeds into the supermassive black hole populations detected today and the impact that this growth history imprints on the immediate environment. I conclude with a discussion of current open questions in black hole physics.
Pedagogical lecture: Measuring supermassive black hole mergers with LISA
Antoine Klein (Birmingham)
In these lectures, I will review the modeling of the gravitational wave response of the LISA detector at low frequencies, in the context of supermassive black hole mergers. I will then review the expected accuracy of the parameter measurement for such systems, both for physical parameters and for modified theories of gravity.