Postdoctoral Fellowship: AAPF: Building Intermediate Mass Black Holes through Nuclear Star Clusters

Antonio Porras-Valverde is awarded an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Fellowship to carry out a program of research and education at Yale University. Porras will conduct research that will result in testable predictions of black hole formation channels, growth and feedback. Data from upcoming surveys, such as the Legacy Survey of Space and Time will provide key and timely tests to the model predictions.

For the educational component, Porras will work with Yale graduate students to co-lead computational and professional development workshops for undergraduates.

Currently, no semi-analytic model (SAM) includes the impact of continual seeding of intermediate mass black holes (IMBH) formed in dense nuclear star clusters as a black hole seed formation channel. Porras will include this channel into the DARK SAGE SAM and measure its effect on several scaling relations over time, including the relationship between the mass of the IMBH and the velocity dispersion of the host galaxy.

Finally, Porras will calculate the variation in mass accretion within the IMBH mass range between this new model and a fiducial DARK SAGE model to predict observational signatures and quantify the impact of the new growth channel on the cosmic assembly history of supermassive black holes. This research award is partially funded by a generous gift from Charles Simonyi to the NSF Astronomy division.

The project includes significant contributions to Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.