相关论文: Secularly powered outflows from AGN: the dominance…
Recent observations and simulations have challenged the long-held paradigm that mergers are the dominant mechanism driving the growth of both galaxies and supermassive black holes (SMBH), in favour of non-merger (secular) processes. In this…
For over 60 years, the scientific community has studied actively growing central super-massive black holes (active galactic nuclei -- AGN) but fundamental questions on their genesis remain unanswered. Numerical simulations and theoretical…
Research over the past decade has shown diminishing empirical evidence for major galaxy mergers being a dominating or even important mechanism for the growth of supermassive black holes in galaxies and the triggering of optically or X-ray…
We examine the relationship between galaxies, supermassive black holes and AGN using a sample of 22,000 narrow-emission-line AGN drawn from a a sample of 122,000 galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We have studied how AGN host…
We present spatially resolved kinematic measurements of AGN-driven outflows in dwarf galaxies in the stellar mass range $\sim6\times10^8 - 9\times10^9 M_\odot$, selected from SDSS DR7,8 and followed up with Keck/LRIS spectroscopy. We find…
What is the relevance of major mergers and interactions as triggering mechanisms for active galactic nuclei (AGN) activity? To answer this longstanding question, we analyze 140 XMM-selected AGN host galaxies and a matched control sample of…
The kinematic disturbances associated with major galaxy mergers are known to produce gas inflows, which in turn may trigger accretion onto the supermassive black holes (SMBH) of the participant galaxies. While this effect has been studied…
Outflows driven by active galactic nuclei (AGN) are an important channel for accreting supermassive black holes (SMBHs) to interact with their host galaxies and clusters. Properties of the outflows are however poorly constrained due to the…
Active galactic nucleus (AGN) growth in disk-dominated, merger-free galaxies is poorly understood, largely due to the difficulty in disentangling the AGN emission from that of the host galaxy. By carefully separating this emission, we…
I review accretion and outflow in active galactic nuclei. Accretion appears to occur in a series of very small--scale, chaotic events, whose gas flows have no correlation with the large--scale structure of the galaxy or with each other. The…
The growth of supermassive black holes appears to be driven by galaxy mergers, violent merger-free processes and/or `secular' processes. In order to quantify the effects of secular evolution on black hole growth, we study a sample of active…
Powerful winds driven by active galactic nuclei (AGN) are often invoked to play a fundamental role in the evolution of both supermassive black holes (SMBHs) and their host galaxies, quenching star formation and explaining the tight…
We investigate the accretion-driven growth of supermassive black holes in the low-redshift Universe using 23,000 ``Type 2'' AGN and the complete sample of 123,000 galaxies in the SDSS from which they were drawn. We use the stellar velocity…
Understanding the physics and geometry of accretion and ejection around super massive black holes (SMBHs) is important to understand the evolution of active galactic nuclei (AGN) and therefore of the large scale structures of the Universe.…
Powering the 10^62 erg nuclear outburst in the MS0735.6+7421 cluster central galaxy by accretion implies that its supermassive black hole (SMBH) grew by ~6x10^8 solar masses over the past 100 Myr. We place upper limits on the amount of cold…
We report the discovery of a spectroscopically confirmed z = 1.824 minor merger with a mass ratio of ~35:1 in which the secondary (smaller) galaxy hosts a luminous AGN. The system is identified in the 3D-HST survey and exhibits clear tidal…
We map the co-eval growth of galaxies and their central supermassive black holes in detail by measuring the incidence of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) in galaxies as a function of star formation rate (SFR) and redshift (to z~4). We combine…
AGN driven outflows are invoked in numerical simulations to reproduce several observed properties of local galaxies. The z > 1 epoch is of particular interest as it was during this time that the volume averaged star formation and the…
We summarize what large surveys of the contemporary universe have taught us about the physics and phenomenology of the processes that link the formation and evolution of galaxies and their central supermassive black holes. We present a…
Multiple models have been suggested over the years to explain the structure and support of accretion disks around supermassive black holes, from the standard thin thermal-pressure-dominated $\alpha$-disk model to more recent models that…