AAS Journal Author Series: Alejandro Cruz-Osorio on 2026ApJ..1001..227C

Alejandro Cruz-Osorio (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México) chats about his article on the first application of an ab initio approach to the electron temperature derived from microscopic simulations of turbulent collisionless plasmas in general-relativistic radiative-transfer calculations. This novel method, which has no tunable coefficients and is fully specified by the thermodynamical and magnetic properties of the plasma, provides a better description of the jet morphology and width derived from Global Millimeter VLBI Array observations at 86 GHz, as well as of the broadband spectral emission. These findings highlight the importance of incorporating microscopic plasma physics in black hole imaging and emphasise the crucial role of magnetic reconnection in electron heating and acceleration processes. Supermassive Black Hole Imaging with a Self-consistent Electron-temperature Prescription https://scixplorer.org/abs/2026ApJ..1... Alejandro's web presence: https://www.astroscu.unam.mx/~aosorio... The intended audience for the AAS Journal Author Series is active researchers.