Institute for Advanced Study/Princeton University Joint Astrophysics Colloquium

Accreting black holes are observed in a large variety of systems in astronomy: active galactic nuclei, X-ray binaries, tidal disruption events, gamma-ray bursts. While analytical one-dimensional models have been enormously useful for understanding several aspects of accretion physics, some aspects such as the formation of jets and winds are beyond the scope of these models. Numerical general relativistic MHD simulations have filled the gap and are proving increasingly useful for studying the multidimensional gas dynamics and radiative properties of accretion flows. The talk will review some recent progress in this field.