Probing the mass and growth of supermassive black holes

探测超大质量黑洞的质量和生长

• 批准号: 2890934
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Southampton
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2890934
• 关键词: Probing; mass; growth; supermassive; black

The accretion of gas onto supermassive black holes is one of the most efficient known processes to convert mass to energy. While the black hole is growing in mass, a significant amount of energy is emitted into its surroundings. These objects are called active supermassive black holes or Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) and are observed in the centres of galaxies. Even though only a small fraction of supermassive black holes is active, AGN are thought to be able to influence the growth of the galaxies in which they live. In this project the student will use new observations from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) to 1) investigate how black hole activity varies with time and 2) measure the mass of a large sample of active supermassive black holes for the first time. Both the variability and mass of the black holes are key parameters to understanding the physics of black hole accretion and growth. The student will use their findings to characterise the timescale in which AGN of different brightness vary and determine how the black hole masses are related to the large-scale properties of the host galaxies. The student will be part of ESO's 4MOST consortium and TiDES-RM (Time Domain Extragalactic Survey - Reverberation Mapping), a new survey which will soon start observing hundreds of AGN.

气体在超大质量黑洞上的吸积是已知的将质量转化为能量的最有效过程之一。当黑洞的质量增加时，大量的能量被释放到它的周围。这些物体被称为活动超大质量黑洞或活动星系核（AGN），并在星系中心观察到。尽管只有一小部分超大质量黑洞是活跃的，但活动星系核被认为能够影响它们所在星系的生长。在这个项目中，学生将使用欧洲南方天文台（ESO）的新观测结果来1）研究黑洞活动如何随时间变化，2）首次测量活动超大质量黑洞的大样本质量。黑洞的可变性和质量都是理解黑洞吸积和增长物理学的关键参数。学生将利用他们的发现来确定不同亮度的AGN变化的时间尺度，并确定黑洞质量如何与宿主星系的大尺度特性相关。该学生将成为ESO的4 MOST联盟和TiDES-RM（时域河外巡天-混响映射）的一部分，这是一项新的巡天，将很快开始观测数百个AGN。