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Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference: EP/T017570/1
Title: New Frontiers in Black Hole Physics - Polarisation and Scattering Radiation Transport in Strong Gravity
Principal Investigator: Younsi, Dr Z
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Researcher Co-Investigators:
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Department: Mullard Space Science Laboratory
Organisation: UCL
Scheme: EPSRC Fellowship
Starts: 01 April 2021 Ends: 30 September 2024 Value (£): 369,852
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Panel History:
Panel DatePanel NameOutcome
03 Dec 2019 Stephen Hawking Fellowship Announced
21 Jan 2020 Stephen Hawking Fellowship Interview Panel 2 Announced
Summary on Grant Application Form
Black holes are an astonishing prediction of Einstein's General Relativity: widely-accepted, yet evading direct observational confirmation.

Astronomers have already detected gravitational waves from coalescing black holes and neutron stars, and have recently captured an image of a supermassive black hole, providing the strongest evidence to date of their existence.

Upcoming spectroscopic and polarimetric observations will open a new domain in black hole and jet physics, elucidating the magnetic field structure, geometry and physical processes therein.

These new data contain a wealth of information concerning the fundamental nature of the black hole itself, such as its mass and spin, as well as the properties of the surrounding material, for example its temperature, geometrical distribution and magnetic properties and content.

Extracting this crucial physical information from these data requires the development of new theoretical formulations which properly calculate all effects caused by the presence of ultra-strong gravitational fields and ultra-relativistic motions of matter, along with the internal radiative properties of this matter.

In turn, this also requires the development of new computational approaches to accurately solve the equations which describe these systems, thereby deciphering the fundamental information encoded in these new data.

This project develops new tools necessary to calculate the transport of polarised light in scattering media in strong gravity in a physically correct and self-consistent manner, laying a foundation for meaningful physical interpretation of astrophysical observations and studying fundamental physics.
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