Probing the mass and growth of supermassive black holes

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.