Main Colloquium
Dr. Frank Rieger	SCHEDULED

IPP

Accreting supermassive black holes are believed to drive the energy output in the form of radiation and relativistic plasma outflows (jets) seen in active galactic nuclei (AGN). As the most powerful, persistent sources in the Universe, AGN provide a unique possibility to explore the realm of extreme physics. I will highlight some recent advances in the high-energy plasma diagnostics of these objects, ranging from magnetospheric processes in the vicinity of supermassive black holes to the physical characteristics of their large-scale jets. On black-hole horizon scales, for example, gap-type particle acceleration is a likely mechanism behind the rapidly variable gamma-ray emission observed in sources such as M87, and may supply the plasma necessary for continuous jet formation. On larger scales, a combination of first and second-order Fermi-type acceleration processes presumably plays a key role in shaping the non-thermal emission properties of AGN jets. I will give an introduction to these scenarios, comment on their potential role for ultra-high energy cosmic-ray production, and address some of the key challenges currently facing this field.

	Special Colloquium
Dr. Guang-Xing Li	SCHEDULED

SWIFAR, Kunming

Modern Astronomical Observations provide high-fidelity images that might contain complex structures. The effective approaches to analyzing these structures remain missing. Here, I present a method, which can extract information from these maps by analyzing the relationship between measurement values from adjacent pixels. The method can reveal regularities in the parameter space, which is hard to obtain otherwise, and can provide optimal ways to divide a region into patches of heterogeneous properties. I provide examples where the method has been used to analyze astronomical, medical, agricultural, and climate images.