GROWING BLACK HOLES
Accretion in a Cosmological Context

Garching, Germany,
21-25 June 2004

Second Circular

This is the second announcement of the MPA/ESO/MPE/USM Joint Astronomy Conference that will be held in Garching, Germany, June, 21-25. To date, including invited speakers, about 140 prospective attendees have pre-registered for the meeting. As mentioned in the first circular, the conference will be limited to about 160 participants due to the capacity of the venue. The deadline for abstract submission has been postponed to March 20th. After that date, those who have pre-registered for the conference will be contacted by the LOC to inform them about the Scientific Advisory Committee decision on their participation (if the number of registrations exceeds the capacity of the conference hall). Prospective participants that were not selected will be put on a waiting list. This circular contains updated information regarding the preliminary list of invited/key speakers, the conference format, social program and accommodation. The next Conference circular will be mailed only to the pre-registered attendees.

Preliminary List of Invited Speakers

Currently, the list of confirmed review and targeted speakers includes:
- Marek Abramowicz: Efficiency of super-Eddington accretion
- Fred Baganoff: Chandra Observations of the Galactic center
- Ralf Bender: Supermassive black holes in galaxy centers
- Roger Blandford: On the evolution of black holes and their host galaxies
- Niel Brandt: X-rays from the First Massive Black Holes
- Karsten Danzmann: LISA and black hole merging(**)
- Andy Fabian: The X-ray Background and black holes accretion history(**)
- Xiaohui Fan: The highest-redshift Quasars
- Reinhard Genzel: Infrared observations of Sgr A*(**)
- Zoltan Haiman(*): The growth of the earliest supermassive black holes and their contribution to reionization
- Guenther Hasinger: When supermassive black holes were growing: clues from deep X-ray surveys(**)
- Guineviere Kauffmann: Accretion onto Black Holes in the Local Universe: the SDSS View
- Andrew King: Outflows, M - sigma, and the supermassive BH environment
- Abraham Loeb: Birth and Dynamics of Black Holes in Galaxies
- Piero Madau: Dynamics and Evolution of the Earliest Seed Massive Black Holes
- David Merritt: Interaction of Supermassive black holes with their stellar and dark matter environments
- Sterl Phinney: Black hole astrophysics from gravitational waves
- Martin Rees: The formation and evolution of first black holes
- Bernard Schutz: Gravitational waves from merging black holes: theory and simulations
- Volker Springel: Black holes formation and feedback in cosmological simulations
(*) to be confirmed
(**) tentative title

Conference Format

The program will feature:
- invited review talks of approx. 40 mns
- invited targeted talks of approx. 30 mns
- contributed talks of approx. 20 mns. It is estimated that there will be time for 40-45 contributed talks.
- poster sessions
The conference proceedings will be published in the Springer-Verlag series "ESO Astrophysics Symposia".

Scientific Advisory Committee

Ralf Bender (USM/LMU), Roger Blandford (Stanford Univ.), Catherine Cesarsky (ESO), Reinhard Genzel (MPE), Martin Rees (IoA, Cambridge), Rashid Sunyaev (MPA), Scott Tremaine (Princeton).

Scientific Rationale

Supermassive black holes (SMBH) are among the most spectacular objects in the Universe. Studies of SMBH shed light on fundamental phenomena occurring in their immediate vicinity, such as the accretion of gas and strong gravity effects. Significant observational links between cosmic structure and supermassive black holes have been established in recent years. Many fundamental questions arise and are currently unanswered. It is therefore timely to bring together the extragalactic astronomy, cosmology and the accretion physics communities to discuss these questions, and the implications of the connection between the SMBH growth and galaxy formation.

Topics to be addressed

- Were black holes seeds or by-products of galaxy formation?
- The growth of SMBHs due to mergers, accretion and stellar captures: which is more important?
- How important is the feedback from supermassive black holes in structure formation?
- What is the role of accreting black holes in the reionization of the Universe?
- Sgr A* as a test-bed for our knowledge of the immediate AGN environment.
- What does the X-ray Background tell us about AGN activity and obscuration, both at low and at high redshifts?
- What sets QSOs lifetimes and their accretion efficiency? How is the SMBH activity connected to galaxy mergers and central star bursts?
- What can we learn about AGN from studies of stellar mass binary black holes?
- What is the connection between SMBH jets and accretion discs? Are jets matter or Poynting flux dominated?
- SMBHs as sources of gravitational radiation.

Social Program

- The conference will start with a reception and registration on Sunday the 20th of June. This will take place in the Burgerhaus (City Hall) in Garching between 18.00 and 21.00. There will be a buffet and refreshments.
- Following a tradition of the joint MPA/MPE/ESO/USM Conferences, Tuesday evening there will be an informal "Bier und Brez'n" (beer & pretzels) party in the MPE/MPA garden.
- The conference dinner is included in the registration fee and will take place at 19.30 on Thursday the 24th at a restaurant (yet to be decided) in Munich. There will be buses from the conference hall to the dinner, and buses for the trip back to Garching after the dinner.
See Social events for more informations.

Location

The conference will be held in Garching, on the grounds of the MPA/MPE/ESO/IPP campus. Garching is conveniently located 15 km north of Munich center and within about same distance from the Munich International Airport, and is easily reached by public transportation. See Travel info for more informations.

Visa

The participants are urged to check themselves whether they are required to obtain a valid travel visa to enter Germany to attend the conference (Links to the German Embassies around the world can be found here ). If such visa is required, please contact the LOC/SAC by email, and an official invitation letter will be sent to you.

Registration fee payment

The conference registration fee should be paid only after the participation has been confirmed by the SAC. The fee is 200 Euros if paid before the deadline (May 10th for all confirmed participants), and 220 Euros if paid later. The fee, payable in Euros only, includes the costs of the proceedings, opening reception, evening beer reception at MPA, coffee and refreshments during breaks, conference dinner and bus transportation between the hotels and the conference venue. Payment details are to be found at the Registration webpage of the Conference.

Accomodation

There are several inexpensive as well as medium price range hotels in Garching, in which about 110 reservations will be held for the Conference participants. Further information will be made available soon on the Conference Accomodation webpage.