Galaxy Formation and Massive Black Hole Evolution
Image Caption: Images of a high resolution simluations showing stars and gas within a low mass galaxy merger taking place at z = 4 (when the Universe was about 1 Billion years old). The galaxies each have a massive black hole (shown with an "x") that will eventually form a binary and merge, producing gravitational waves. High resolution simulations like these are crucial for understanding the host galaxies of massive black hole binaries that will be detected with the future LISA gravitational wave detector.
Dr. Michael Tremmel runs simulations of galaxies using the N-body+Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics code, ChaNGa (link to https://github.com/N-BodyShop/changa/). Dr. Tremmel's group focuses is on creating models for massive black hole formation, growth, and dynamics and implementing them within simulations of various scales. Our group then uses this data to study how these black holes co-evolve with their host galaxies over cosmic time, predict where and when they form binaries (see figure), and examine the effect they have on the observable properties of galaxies.
| Current Postgraduate Students |
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| Lee Whitaker | Masters Student |
| Lee is using data from the Romulus simulation (link to https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2017MNRAS.470.1121T/abstract) to study the spin evolution of massive black holes by developing a post-processing model that accounts for accretion, relativistic jets, and mergers. Lee is also examining the influence of black hole dynamics in their growth, predicting a population of under-massive, central black holes in Milky Way-mass galaxies. |
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| Ben Sheehan | Masters Student |
| Ben is examining data from the Romulus simulation to study the population of black holes over cosmic time. His work involves examining the fate of early luminous active galactic nuclei and seeing how often they end up as off-center, wandering black holes. For his Masters' thesis, Ben is studying the population of dual AGN (systems with two actively growing, luminous black holes) in the Romulus simulations and how their properties relate to time and host galaxy properties. |
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| Patryk Hadjul | Masters Student |
| Patryk is studying the early Universe in relation to massive black hole growth. He is comparing the growth and merger histories of massive black holes in the early Universe (z = 5; the first billion years). He is using advanced statistics techniques to relate this history to the properties and evolutionary history of massive black hole host galaxies. This research is directly relevant to observations currently being made with JWST. |
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