Do black holes affect how galaxies evolve?

超大质量黑洞现在被认为潜伏在大多数(如果不是全部)星系的中心，但目前仍不清楚这些黑洞是如何形成的，是什么推动了它们在宇宙历史上随后的增长，以及它们如何影响它们所在的星系。该项目将专注于识别不断增长的黑洞--被视为活动星系核(AGN)--并将这些活动星系核的性质与星系的演化联系起来。星系遵循一系列的演化路径，它们的大小、形态、恒星形成率、恒星数量和气体性质都会随着时间的推移而变化。然而，黑洞的作用和活动星系核对这些过程的影响尚不清楚。我们将使用最新的星系调查，结合来自广泛设施(包括哈勃太空望远镜和凯克天文台)的数据，以确定不同宇宙时期和不同演化状态的星系。然后，我们将使用多波长数据集--包括X射线数据(来自钱德拉、XMM-牛顿和NuSTAR)、红外成像和射电数据-来识别这些星系中的活动星系核，并确定它们的性质(如它们的光度、黑洞吸积率和遮挡程度)。然后，我们将追踪活动星系核的活动水平如何依赖于星系的性质，以提供新的见解，以推动黑洞在不断演化的星系群中增长，并调查黑洞对其所在星系的影响。

Supermassive black holes are now thought to lurk at the centres of most, if not all, galaxies but it is still unclear how these black holes form, what drives their subsequent growth over the history of the Universe, and how they affect the galaxies they lie in. This project will focus on identifying growing black holes - seen as Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) -and connecting the properties of these AGN with the evolution of galaxies. Galaxies follow a range of evolutionary pathways, whereby their sizes, morphologies, star formation rates, stellar populations and gas properties change over time. However, the role of the black hole and the impact of an AGN on these processes remains unclear.We will use the latest galaxy surveys, incorporating data from a wide range of facilities (including the Hubble Space Telescope and Keck Observatory) to identify galaxies at different cosmic epochs and in different evolutionary states. We will then use multiwavelength datasets - including X-ray data (from Chandra, XMM-Newton, and NuSTAR), infrared imaging, and radio data - to identify AGN within these galaxies and determine their properties (such as their luminosities, black hole accretion rates, and their level of obscuration). We will then track how the levels of AGN activity depend on the galaxy properties to provide new insights into the processes that fuel black hole growth across the evolving galaxy population and investigate the impact of black holes on the galaxies they lie in.