Supermassive Black Hole Growth and Galaxy Evolution

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• Meg Urry (Yale University)
• Tuesday 15 March 2016, 16:00-17:00
• Sackler Lecture Theatre, IoA (tea at 3:30 pm).

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Simon Hodgkin.

Using multi-wavelength surveys like GOODS , COSMOS, and Stripe 82X, we measure the growth of supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies over the last approx 12 billion years. Most actively growing black holes are heavily obscured and thus are not seen in large optical surveys, like the Sloan Digital Sky Survey; at the same time, the deep multi-wavelength surveys are too small to find rare objects like luminous SDSS quasars. So completing the census of black hole growth will require a large-volume X-ray survey, to explore obscured growth at high luminosity and/or high redshift. Theorists have suggested that mergers trigger Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), whose radiation and/or outflows may quench star formation and strongly affect galaxy evolution (³feedback²). But our morphological analyses showed that most moderate luminosity AGN at redshifts z ~1-2 have not undergone a recent major merger. Finally, using morphological classifications in the local universe from Galaxy Zoo, we identify two distinct modes of galaxy evolution in the local universe, with mergers and AGN feedback affecting only a minority.

This talk is part of the Institute of Astronomy Colloquia series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Combined External Astrophysics Talks DAMTP
• Cosmology lists
• Cosmology, Astrophysics and General Relativity
• Institute of Astronomy Colloquia
• Institute of Astronomy Talk Lists
• Kavli Institute for Cosmology Talk Lists
• Priscilla
• Sackler Lecture Theatre, IoA (tea at 3:30 pm)

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