Feedback from Active Galactic Nuclei Across Time and Space

• Applicant: Dr. Dominika Wylezalek
• Subject Area: Astrophysics and Astronomy
• Term: since 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 417705232

Supermassive black holes are some of the most mysterious objects that astronomers have tried to understand theoretically and observationally for more than 100 years. Supermassive black holes are now thought to be hosted by every galaxy in the Universe. Maybe even more intriguingly, the energy output of actively accreting supermassive black holes (active galactic nuclei, AGN) has become a critical ingredient in modern galaxy formation theories and is widely considered to be the main driver in regulating the growth of massive galaxies. This energy typically exceeds the binding energy of a galaxy, such that even if only a few percent of that energy couples to the gas, gas may be heated and/or driven outside the galaxy which can effectively quench star formation activity. The critical role of AGN in galaxy formation was hypothesised two decades ago, yet this paradigm only recently obtained observational support and specific observational evidence of AGN-driven feedback has been surprisingly hard to come by. It is far from clear how exactly the coupling between accretion energy and matter on galactic scales is established. Constraining the power and reach of such feedback processes remains a major unresolved issue in modern extragalactic astrophysics.The proposed Emmy Noether research group will focus on finding concrete observational evidence for the self-regulation of supermassive black holes and their host galaxies, on understanding the power, reach and impact of feedback processes exerted by AGN, and on the role of AGN in galaxy evolution. The group will conduct extensive observational campaigns using data from state-of-the-art ground- and space-based telescopes to determine the physical properties of AGN-driven winds and to measure how and how much gas they can remove from their host galaxies. Specifically, the group will leverage integral field unit observations which yield complex datasets probing spatially resolved stellar and gas kinematics and enable fundamentally new methods of investigating AGN feedback. By applying modern statistical techniques and analyses to these high dimensional datasets, the group will characterise the internal structure and the multi-phase nature of AGN feedback signatures, determine outflow masses and energetics, and inventory the sources of gas excitation. Therefore, it will investigate the primary physical processes driving galaxy evolution across cosmic time, providing important constraints for the treatment of AGN feedback in numerical simulations and theoretical models.The applicant has already contributed essential efforts to this field that lay the ground work for this program and she will provide a unique technical and scientific understanding of complex instruments and surveys. This will ensure that her research group is on the front-line of taking advantage of cutting-edge instruments and observatories paving the way to even more detailed studies with the next generation of telescopes.

• DFG Programme: Independent Junior Research Groups