The High-Energy Universe

View from my office

More violent universe discovered in other wavelength bands...

High Energy Particles

Brem + IC

S + 0 decayICS

Brem

sstrahlung + ICS

Radio Microwave Infrared Visible Ultraviolet X-ray Gamma

Synch

rotro

n

ICS

ICS

Leptons Bremsstrahlung

Inverse Compton

Synchrotron

Pair Production

Hadrons Pion Decay

Nuclear Transitions

Active Galactic Nuclei

Objects that emit significant amounts of radiation from non-thermal sources

(i.e. not stars or dust or thermal gas).AGN Zoo: Seyfert Galaxies Radio Galaxies

FR1FR2

Quasars Blazars

Basic Emission Mechanisms

Radio –synchrotron of electrons in the jet

Infrared – thermal emission from the torus

Optical – thermal emission from the diskX-ray-gamma – Inverse Compton

What causes the jets?

Enormous number of jet modelsCurrent most promising ideas extract

energy from the accretion flow via magnetic fieldsExtract energy and angular momentum

though magnetic field anchored in the diskExtract spin energy of the black hole through

magnetic fields threading its horizon

Why are AGNs interesting?

Some of the most spectacular objects in our universe

Black holes could be test beds for quantum gravity

Source of the high-energy cosmic rays?Important for structure formation?

Observing AGN over 13 orders of magnitude in energy

13

Blazar PKS 2155-304

GeV TeVX-rayoptical

HESS and Fermi, ApJ Letters, 696, L150 (2009)

EGRETFermi

Are AGN the source of UHE Cosmic Rays?

Why detect neutrinos?

Because they’re fast....+-

+

+ -

e+ e

e+ e-

e+

0

e-

e+

IceCube Neutrino Observatory

Other neutrino detectors in proportion

Super Kamiokande

SNO

Needle in a haystack?

Plato 428BC-348BC

Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another

Electron neutrino/cascade search results

Examples

But....