Seminar - Jianfeng Wu (Xiamen University)

Seminar time: 2021/12/09 10:30-12:00 (CST)

Speaker: Jianfeng Wu(Xiamen University)

Black Hole Binary Census in the Milky Way Galaxy

Jianfeng Wu

Abstract

There are a few dozens of black hole binaries and candidates identified to date in the Milky Way and nearby galaxies, which only occupies a tiny fraction of the predicted stellar-mass black hole population. In this talk, I will first discuss the method and challenges in measuring the black hole mass in low-mass X-ray binaries, taking Nova Muscae 1991 as a case study. Then I will talk about issues in the mass distribution of black holes (i.e., the mass gap), and potential biases in current way of identifying black hole binaries. The last part of the talk is about the survey projects that I have been involved in, aiming to discover more types of black hole binaries in the Milky Way Galaxy.

Bio

Jianfeng Wu obtained his Bachelor and Master degrees in Physics at Tsinghua University, and the PhD degree in Astronomy & Astrophysics at The Pennsylvania State University. Afterward he did postdoctoral research at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and University of Michigan. Then he joined the faculty at Astronomy Department of Xiamen University in 2017. His research is mainly focused on observational black hole astrophysics across the mass scale, including Galactic black hole binaries, ultraluminous X-ray sources, and active galactic nuclei, etc. He is especially interested in multiwavelength studies and wide-field sky surveys.