Assembly of the most massive black holes in the universe

质量最大的黑洞，太阳质量高达100亿个，位于附近宇宙中质量最大的红色椭圆星系的中心。我们的项目将专注于了解这些极端黑洞如何以及何时聚集它们的质量。我们将首先考虑它们的宿主星系，诊断这些星系是如何演化的，并确定它们在更遥远的宇宙中的祖先。然后，我们将使用深X射线测量数据来评估这些星系何时拥有发光的活动星系核，并追踪它们的黑洞在时间上的增长。利用SDSS-V数据，我们将在宇宙时间内直接识别最大质量的黑洞，限制它们的入射，提取它们所在星系的属性，并确定这些天体如何在附近的宇宙中产生大质量黑洞。

The most massive black holes, with up to 10 billion solar masses, are found at the centres of massive, red elliptical galaxies in the nearby universe. Our project will focus on understanding how and when these extreme black holes assembled their mass. We will start by considering their host galaxies, diagnosing how these galaxies have evolved and identifying their progenitors in the more distant universe. We will then use deep X-ray survey data to assess when such galaxies hosted luminous AGN and track the growth of their black holes back in time. Using SDSS-V data, we will directly identify the most massive black holes over cosmic time as they grow, constrain their incidence, extract the properties of their host galaxies and the determine how such objects can produce the massive black holes in the nearby universe.