Monsters in the dark: gas, dust and star formation around supermassive black holes

潜伏在星系中心的超大质量黑洞似乎在它们的演化中起着关键作用。了解星系和黑洞的共同进化，以及这种进化在不同类型的星系中是如何变化的，对于真正理解这些神秘的物体至关重要。该项目涉及使用高分辨率观测来解析附近星系中围绕超大质量黑洞运行的气体云和尘埃云的结构和运动学。这位博士生将加入一个由加的夫领导的国际天文学家团队，并将使用来自最先进望远镜（阿塔卡马大型毫米/亚毫米阵列、IRAM-30m、APEX和哈勃太空望远镜）的数据。她/他将有机会利用这些数据来估计超大质量黑洞的质量，研究核吸积盘/torii的结构，和/或探测黑洞周围区域恒星形成规律的分解。

The supermassive black holes that lurk in the hearts of galaxies seem to play a key role in their evolution. Understanding the co-evolution of galaxies and black holes, and how this evolution varies in different types of galaxies, is vital to truly understand these enigmatic objects. This project involves using high-resolution observations to resolve the structure and kinematics of clouds of gas and dust orbiting supermassive black holes in nearby galaxies. The PhD student will join an international team of astronomers, lead from Cardiff, and will use data from the state of the art telescopes (the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array, the IRAM-30m, APEX, and the Hubble Space Telescope). She/he will have the opportunity to use these data to estimate supermassive black hole masses, study the structure of nuclear accretion disks/torii, and/or probe the breakdown of star-formation laws in the regions around black holes.