Understanding Feedback from Supermassive Black Holes in Galaxies and Clusters

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Energetic feedback from supermassive black holes is thought to govern the formation and evolution of galaxies and the larger structures surrounding them. The deepest insight into this process has come from studies of cooling gas, star formation, and mechanical feedback through interactions between powerful radio jets and the hot atmospheres surrounding elliptical galaxies and clusters. Over the next five years, we will use observations from the exciting new ALMA, Astro-H, and LOFAR observatories, and the mature and productive Chandra X-ray Observatory to study metal-enriched outflows from supermassive black holes and bulk flows in the hot atmospheres of clusters of galaxies. We will examine the relationships between star formation, molecular gas accretion, and powerful outbursts from accretion disks around supermassive black holes in the nuclei of galaxies. The proposed research will lead to a deeper understanding of how powerful extragalactic radio jets are launched and fueled by examining mechanisms such as accretion from circumnuclear molecular gas disks and Bondi accretion from hot atmospheres. The data from these sensitive new observatories will reveal the growth of supermassive black holes and the evolution of energetic feedback over cosmic time.