The AGN - galaxy connection: utilising the power of large sky surveys

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"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 and what drives their subsequent growth over the history of the Universe. This project will focus on identifying growing black holes - seen as Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN; objects such as quasars and Seyferts) - and connecting the properties of these AGN with the properties of the galaxies they lie in. Will use the latest galaxy surveys, incorporating data from a wide range of facilities such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and the upcoming Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) project to identify galaxies at different cosmic epochs and in different evolutionary states. Will then use multiwavelength datasets including X-ray survey data from ESA's XMM-Newton observatory and NASA's SWIFT and Chandra satellites, together with optical spectroscopy, 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). Will track how the levels of AGN activity depend on the galaxy properties (such as mass, morphology and star formation history) to provide new insights into the processes fuelling and regulating black hole growth across the evolving galaxy population. "