Found 16 talks width keyword supermassive black hole, SMBH

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Friday May 20, 2011
Harvard-Smithsonian Center, USA.

Abstract

In his public talk, Prof. Narayan will summarize our knowledge of Black Holes in the universe. He will describe how Black Holes are discovered, how their properties are measured, and what the results mean. He will also discuss the many ways in which Black Holes influence their surroundings and the profound effect they have had on the evolution of the universe.


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Thursday March 3, 2011
Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, Germany

Abstract

The detection and number estimates of supermassive binary black holes (SMBBHs) provide important constraints on the hierarchical models for galaxy formation and evolution. I will present two different approaches for the possible identification of SMBBHs. 1.Radio-optical studies of X-shaped radio sources:X-shaped radio galaxies are extragalactic radio sources that present two pairs of radio lobes passing symmetrically through the center of the host galaxy, giving the galaxy the X-shaped morphology seen on radio maps.This morphology can reflect either a recent merger of two supermassive black holes or the presence of a second active black hole in the galactic nucleus. This scenario is studied by determining the mass, luminosity, jet dynamic age and starburst of a sample of X-shaped sources and comparing the results to a sample of radio-loud active nuclei with similar redshift and luminosities. 2.Compact radio emission in ULX objects: Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) have luminosities exceeding 10E39 erg/s, suggesting either the presence of black holes larger than stellar mass black holes or sources apparently radiating above the Eddington limit. I will present milliarcsecond-scale radio observations of some ULXs located within optical bright galaxies, resolving their compact radio emission, and measuring its brightness temperature and spectral properties. This allows us to uncover the nature of these sources and investigate whether they are intermediate mass black holes or supermassive black holes stripped of their accretion disks in post-merger systems.


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Thursday February 11, 2010
University of St Andrews, UK

Abstract

We present our latest measurement of the SMBH mass function at redshift zero based on detailed structural studies of 1743 galaxies extracted from the B-band Millennium Galaxy Catalogue. Using the empirical correlations between the mass of the black hole and the photometric properties of the spheroid, MBH-L and MBH-n we estimated the SMBH mass of each galaxy and from this construct empirically derived SMBH mass functions. In addition, using a sample of 30 nearby elliptical and spiral galaxies, we will present new results showing the near-IR correlation between bulge properties and SMBH mass.

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Thursday July 2, 2009
University of California Santa Cruz, USA

Abstract

The coalescence of a massive black hole (MBH) binary leads to the gravitational-wave recoil of the system and its ejection from the galaxy core. We have carried out N-body simulations of the motion of a M=3.7 M⊙ MBH remnant in the “Via Lactea I” Milky Way-sized halo. The hole receives a kick velocity of Vkick = 80, 120, 200, 300, and 400 km/s at redshift 1.5, and its orbit is followed for over 1 Gyr within a “live” host halo, subject only to gravity and dynamical friction against the dark matter background. We show that, owing to asphericities in the dark matter potential, the orbit of the MBH is highly non-radial, resulting in a significantly increased decay timescale compared to a spherical halo. The simulations are used to construct a semi-analytic model of the motion of the MBH in a time-varying triaxial Navarro-Frenk-White dark matter halo plus a spherical stellar bulge, where the dynamical friction force is calculated directly from the velocity dispersion tensor. Such a model should offer a realistic picture of the dynamics of kicked MBHs in situations where gas drag, friction by disk stars, and the flattening of the central cusp by the returning hole are all negligible effects. We find that, in a Milky Way-sized galaxy, a recoiling hole carrying a gaseous disk of initial mass ~2 MBH may shine as a quasar for a substantial fraction of its “wandering” phase. The long decay timescales of recoiling MBHs predicted by this study may thus be favorable to the detection of off-nuclear quasar activity.

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Wednesday January 21, 2009
European Southern Observatory, Garching, Germany

Abstract

The centers of massive galaxies are special in many ways, not least because all of them are believed to host supermassive black holes. Since the discovery of a number of relations linking the mass of this central black hole to the large scale properties of the dynamically hot component of its host galaxy (bulge) it has become clear that the growth of the central black hole is intimately connected to the evolution of its host galaxy. However, for bulge-less galaxies, the situation is much less clear. Interestingly, these galaxy often host star clusters in their nuclei, and unlike black holes, these nuclear star clusters provide a visible record of the accretion of stars and gas into the nucleus. I will present my ongoing projects on nuclear star clusters that aim to understand their formation process and might give a hint on how black holes get to the centers of galaxies.

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Thursday May 22, 2008
Instituto de Estructura de la Materia, CSIC, Spain
University of Sheffield, UK

Abstract

1) In this brief seminar (<~25 minutes+questions) I will present recent results on the study of "deep", high resolution, surface brightness profiles of a sample of ~500 late-type galaxies in the redshift range 0.1—1.1, making use of publicly available HST/ACS imaging of the GOODS-South field. We have classified and parameterized, according to usual prescriptions in this kind of analysis, these profiles, with special emphasis put on the so called ``truncated'' disks. This is the case in which, beyond a certain radius, termed as ``Break Radius'', the exponentially decaying surface brightness profile along the stellar disk gives way to an even more abrupt exponential decay. This radius can be taken as an spatial "scale" for the disk, as observed in a given band (in our case, the rest-frame B-band). Comparing with analogous analysis for galaxies in the Local Universe, as we have done, it is possible to extract valuable information on the evolution of several photometric properties of the stellar disks of galaxies, related to the stellar populations distributions. I will also present results on the analysis of the color profiles of this sample of galaxies, which have yield an interesting result which is, perhaps, the main reason that justifies calling this talk a "breaking news" seminar, as I will show. Summarizing, an overview of the results we have obtained will be given, and our conclusions on them, explaining how they can be understood in the frame of Galaxy Evolution (2) Based on high quality near-infrared spectroscopy (obtained with WHT/LIRIS) we reveal that the nucleus of Mrk 573 is an obscured Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 and not an archetypal Seyfert 2 as it has been classified until now. Currently only four AGNs have been classified into this category. We have detected permitted OI and FeII transitions, which indicates the existence of a high density region similar to the BLRs detected in type 1 AGN.


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