Resolving How Black Holes Influence Galaxy Evolution

我们的太阳只是我们的银河系内数千亿颗恒星中的一颗。通过观察位于银河系中心的恒星的运动，人们有了一个惊人的发现：有一个看不见的物体，质量是太阳的400万倍。这是一个超大质量的黑洞，事实上，所有大型星系的中心都有这样一个天体。当气体接近这些超大质量黑洞时，黑洞会变得难以置信地热，并产生大量的能量，如光或带电粒子的“喷流”。这种能量有可能加热气体，并将其从宿主星系吹走。这种气体本来可以继续形成新的恒星。因此，从理论上讲，这些超大质量黑洞具有令人难以置信的潜力，可以极大地改变它们所在星系的未来。这包括我们银河系中心的超大质量黑洞。目前公认的星系形成理论认为，如果不发生来自中心超大质量黑洞的能量注入，星系将包含更多恒星，这些恒星将更紧密地堆积在一起。虽然这是一个强有力的理论观点，但对这一过程的不同可能的物理模型进行直接的观测测试是非常缺乏的。有了这项研究，我计划通过将精致的观测数据集与定制的模拟相结合来告知星系形成理论，以解决超大质量黑洞如何影响星系生命的悬而未决的问题。列举现在和不久的将来可用的新观测设施，有望为我们提供理解超大质量黑洞与其宿主星系之间关系所需的数据。在这个联谊会中，我将使用这些世界级的设施，在电磁频谱上运作。这包括，将是世界上最大的在可见光-红外波长工作的望远镜，极大望远镜，由我的项目合作伙伴欧洲南方天文台在智利建造。为了了解整个星系群体，并寻找重要的潜在趋势，我将使用史无前例的大量星系样本的光谱。然后，我将利用对精心挑选的星系的后续观测，细致地测量气体的条件和运动。我将通过对气体的极其详细的模拟产生直接的观测预测，来测试针对这些观测的星系形成理论。我将：(1)确定快速增长的黑洞将气体驱逐出星系的普遍程度；(2)计算流出的气体在不同阶段(例如，分子或电离气体)携带的能量和质量；以及(3)建立宿主星系中恒星形成受到这些过程影响的程度。我还将利用这项研究，让盲人和视障人士(BVI)社区更容易获得数据。这是建立在我之前的公共参与工作的基础上，并将与来自当地英属维尔京群岛社区团体和美国空间望远镜科学研究所的志愿者合作。将探索通过声音表示数据的新方法，用于天文学研究，然后是更广泛的学术和工业应用。该项目还大力投资于早期职业研究人员(研究助理和博士生)的培训和发展，并将为他们提供大数据和协作编码方面的技能。它还将向公众宣传英国参与开发极大望远镜。这些努力将证明，天文学涉及包括工程师和软件开发人员在内的广泛的熟练人员。这项研究还将涉及建立可供世界各地天文学家访问和分析的大型光谱数据库。

Our Sun is just one of hundreds of billions of stars inside our home galaxy - the Milky Way. By observing the motions of stars located at the centre of our galaxy an amazing discovery was made: there lies an invisible object containing 4 million times more mass than the Sun. This is a supermassive black hole, and in fact all large galaxies contain such an object at their centres. As gas gets close to these supermassive black holes the become incredibly hot and produce vast amounts of energy as light or as "jets" of charged particles. This energy has the potential to heat gas and to blow it away from the host galaxy. This is gas that could otherwise have gone on to form new stars. Therefore, these supermassive black holes theoretically have the incredible potential to dramatically change the future of the galaxies that they reside in. This includes the supermassive black hole at the centre of our own Milky Way. Accepted galaxy formation theories currently state that if this energy injection from their central supermassive black holes did not occur, galaxies would contain more stars and these stars would be packed more closely together. Whilst this is a strong theoretical idea, there is a stark lack of direct observational tests of the different possible physical models of this process. With this fellowship I plan to inform galaxy formation theory by combining exquisite observational data sets with bespoke simulations to resolve the outstanding question of how supermassive black holes influence the life of galaxies.Exciting new observing facilities, available now and in the near future, promise to give us the data needed to understand the relationship between supermassive black holes and their host galaxies. In this Fellowship, I will be using such world-class facilities, operating across the electromagnetic spectrum. This includes, what will be the world's largest telescope operating at visible-infrared wavelengths, the Extremely Large Telescope, which is being built in Chile by my Project Partners the European Southern Observatory. To understand the galaxy population as a whole, and to search for important underlying trends, I will use spectroscopy from unprecedently large samples of galaxies. I will then use follow-up observations of carefully selected galaxies to measure in meticulous detail the conditions and motions of gas. I will test galaxy formation theory against these observations by producing direct observational predictions from extremely detailed simulations of the gas. I will: (1) establish how common it is for rapidly growing black holes to drive gas out of galaxies; (2) calculate how much energy and mass is being carried by the outflowing gas in different phases (e.g., molecular or ionised gas) and; (3) establish to what extent star formation in the host galaxy is affected by these processes. I will also use this research to make data more accessible to the blind and vision impaired (BVI) community. This builds on my previous public engagement work and will be in partnership with volunteers from local BVI community groups and the Space Telescope Science Institute in the USA. New methods will be explored to represent data through sound for astronomy research and then wider academic and industrial applications. This project also invests heavily in training and development of early career researchers (Research Associates and PhD students) and will provide them with skills in Big Data and collaborative coding. It will also promote to the general public the UK's involvement in developing the Extremely Large Telescope. These efforts will demonstrate that astronomy involves a wide range of skilled people including engineers and software developers. This Fellowship will also involve constructing large spectroscopic databases that can be accessed and analysed by astronomers all over the world.