Probing the mass and growth of supermassive black holes

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。虽然黑洞的质量在增长，但有大量的能量被释放到它的周围。这些天体被称为活动超大质量黑洞或活动星系核(AGN)，在星系中心被观测到。尽管只有一小部分超大质量黑洞是活跃的，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)首次测量大样本活跃的超大质量黑洞的质量。黑洞的可变性和质量都是理解黑洞吸积和增长物理的关键参数。学生将利用他们的发现来描述不同亮度的活动星系核变化的时间尺度，并确定黑洞质量如何与宿主星系的大尺度属性相关。这名学生将成为欧洲南方天文台4MOST联盟和潮汐-RM(时间域河外观测-混响测绘)的一员，这是一项即将开始观测数百个活动星系核的新调查。

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.