HIGH-Z BLACK HOLES · The mass and growth of (obscured) black holes and their host galaxies since the Universe was young
FP7 — People (Marie Curie Actions)
- Duration
- 2009-09-25 → 2011-09-24
- EU contribution
- €160,115
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MC-IEF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
The mass and growth of (obscured) black holes and their host galaxies since the Universe was young
The 2009-235038 Intra European Marie Curie fellowship was successfully concluded. During the course of it, the fellow (Dr K. Dasyra) presented 2 first-author publications, and participated to 2 second-author, and 12 other publications. Dasyra & Combes (2011) reported on the first discovery of an outflow of the most abundant molecular species, H2. The outflow is likely to be driven by the radio jet of an active galactic nucleus (AGN), and it entrains an impressive amount of gas, i.e., 1/4th of the total gas mass reservoir at a temperature of a few hundred Kelvin. It is through such outflows that AGN could affect the formation of new stars in their host galaxies. In Dasyra et al. (2011), we presented a new method for estimating black hole masses from the luminosity-corrected velocity dispersion of the gas that AGN photoionize. We attribute it to a dependence of the detected gas motions on the AGN luminosity or feedback effects (i.e. jets/winds/radiation pressure), which on their turn depend on the black hole mass. The full high-resolution spectroscopic archive of the Spitzer space telescope was used for this calibration, which is expected to have a large impact in the field of galaxy evolution: it will permit us to weigh black holes in obscured galaxies up to z~4 with the next generation IR space missions. Thanks to this calibration, the fellow was included in the consortium of the future SPICA space mission's far infrared instrument to add to its discovery-space science. She was also granted access to Herschel guaranteed time. The goal of the new Herschel observations will be the density and mass determination of the diffuse gas that AGN photoionize. During this Marie Curie grant, the fellow was also added to 3 Herschel groups or consortia, and developed a most fruitful collaboration with Prof. Combes at the neighbouring Observatoire de Paris, where she is now working.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
The goal of this proposal is to establish a method for the quantification of fundamental active galactic nucleus (AGN) properties, i.e., black hole (BH) masses and accretion rates, in high-redshift and obscured AGN. We aim to use infrared spectra from the Spitzer and Herschel space telescopes to study the kinematics and fluxes of gas emission lines originating from the AGN narrow-line region (NLR). Our first results indicate that the mid-infrared (MIR) NLR line widths follow the relation between the BH mass and the velocity dispersion of the stars in the bulge. This result indicates that the NLR kinematics can be used as a surrogate of the stellar kinematics in the computation of BH masses because they are influenced by the bulge gravitational potential. The MIR NLR luminosities correlate with the AGN bolometric luminosity, allowing us to measure its accretion rate. Still, two tests need to be performed prior to the use of NLR kinematics for the computation of BH properties. We need to i) examine how susceptible they are on outflows by studying their line profiles in wavelengths with little obscuration and in radio-loud and highly-accreting AGN, and ii) test that our technique can be applied in bright local AGN, which are the analogues of many high-z AGN. To populate the relation between the BH mass and the stellar velocity dispersion at high luminosities, we will use near-infrared data obtained with adaptive-optics assisted spectographs, to measure the stellar kinematics in local quasars. Once our tool is calibrated, we will use Spitzer and Herschel datasets to derive the first BH mass estimates of obscured type-2 AGN and to investigate for evolution in the masses of BHs from z~0 to z~3. Our tool will enable studies of the growth of (obscured) BHs and their host galaxies since the Universe was young and it can be largely used for the interpretation of future space missions datasets, such as James Webb Space Telescope spectra.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- COMMISSARIAT A L ENERGIE ATOMIQUE ET AUX ENERGIES ALTERNATIVES · ParisCoordinatorFrance
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union