Scientific rationale

The GRAVITY+ project aims to improve GRAVITY’s performance by several orders of magnitude by deploying four Extreme Adaptive Optics (XAO) and four Laser Stars (LGS), distributed on each of the VLT’s 8-meter telescopes. These transformations, combined with others planned in GRAVITY+ (double field, improved fringe tracking performance, etc.) will enable a real leap in performance (x100 in sky coverage, x50 in sensitivity, and x10 in contrast) and reach many new objects (e.g. AGN at z 2, faint stars at the galactic center, exoplanets with deltaK > 13mag).

The aim of this workshop is to bring together the French community that will be involved in the scientific exploitation of the instrument with regard to two themes: the center of our Galaxy, and active galactic nuclei. We want to bring this community together in order to help bring out possible convergences in the major scientific questions, and identify new avenues for collaboration. In short, we want to contribute to the structuring of the “galactic nuclei” community in the broadest sense, through the scientific perspectives of GRAVITY+.

Preliminary program:

(Acronyms: GC = galactic center; AGN = active galactic nuclei)

J1

Morning topic: GC / Spin measurement and general relativity tests
Afternoon theme: AGN / black hole mass measurement

J2

Morning theme: GC / Sgr A* close environment (accretion/ejection flow, acceleration, bursts, extended mass)
Afternoon theme: AGN / characterization of the SMBH environment (BLR, NLR, torus)
Conference dinner

J3

Morning theme: GC / interstellar medium of the galactic center
Afternoon theme: AGN / new high-z detections