Overview
The energy released by an accreting black hole is far larger than the binding energy of its host galaxy, which makes it plausible that black holes regulate the star formation and gas content of the systems in which they live. This idea underpins the feedback prescriptions of essentially all modern cosmological simulations, and it is invoked to explain the quenching of massive galaxies and the shape of the galaxy stellar mass function. The observational picture, however, is still ambiguous: correlations between black hole mass and host properties could reflect genuine causal coupling, or they could emerge statistically from repeated mergers averaging over initially uncorrelated distributions. Distinguishing these possibilities requires accurate black hole masses in galaxies of many different types, together with equally careful measurements of the stellar structure, kinematics and stellar populations of the hosts.
My Research
For every galaxy in my samples I combine the dynamical black hole mass with a full structural and kinematic description of the host: multi-Gaussian expansion models of the surface photometry, stellar population and kinematic measurements from integral-field spectroscopy, and molecular-gas distributions from ALMA. This lets me look for systematic differences between quiescent ellipticals, gas-rich spirals and dwarfs. I am also quantifying, through simulated HARMONI observations, how far beyond 100 Mpc dynamical mass measurements can be pushed, since reaching those distances begins to probe the era when black hole and galaxy growth were most vigorous.
Literature Review
Literature review for this theme is in preparation and will be added here.
Summary of Findings
A summary of key results and findings for this theme is in preparation and will be added here.