Super-massive black holes across cosmic time

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• Johannes Buchner (MPE)
• Friday 15 September 2023, 11:30-12:30
• Ryle seminar room + online.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Sandro Tacchella.

Black holes of millions to billion solar masses in the centres of nearby galaxies raise the question how and when these black holes were created. I will give an overview of some investigations of the origin, growth and consequences of the presence of such black holes studied with X-ray surveys including from the new all-sky surveyor eROSITA and multi-wavelength information. In understanding the host galaxies growing their black holes, a on-going challenge is that light from Active Galactic Nuclei contaminates the emission of galaxies, making the measurement of stellar masses and star-formation rates notoriously unreliable. Overly high masses when the AGN model is incomplete are typical. This prevents evolutionary tests comparing black hole and host galaxy properties. Our group developed a novel data-driven benchmark data set where host galaxy masses and AGN properties are known, and tested a variety of SED fitting codes to critically evaluate their ability to infer host galaxy properties. Finally, we present an unbiased SED fitting method, GRAHSP , Grasping Reliably the AGN Host Stellar Population, to test the evolution of supermassive black holes in the centres of galaxies.

This talk is part of the Galaxies Discussion Group series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Cambridge Astronomy Talks
• Combined External Astrophysics Talks DAMTP
• Cosmology, Astrophysics and General Relativity
• Galaxies Discussion Group
• Institute of Astronomy Talk Lists
• Kavli Institute for Cosmology Talk Lists
• Ryle seminar room + online

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