Astro Seminar
Fuelling and trigerring Active Galactic Nuclei
Speaker: Carolin Villforth (University of Bath)
Date: Wednesday 6 March 2024
Time: 14:00
Venue: N3.28/Zoom
The discovery that supermassive black holes reside in the centres of most if not all massive galaxies has emphasised the importance of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) in galaxy evolution. Despite this, the processes that trigger Active Galactic Nuclei remain poorly understood. While low luminosity AGN require fuel supplies low enough to allow fuelling through so-called secular processes, the gas masses required to power luminous AGN are so large that major mergers of gas-rich galaxies are likely the only triggering mechanisms. Theoretical models therefore often assume that major mergers trigger both massive starbursts and AGN activity. However, the observational evidence for a connection between mergers and AGN remains mixed. I will present results from different studies analyzing the contribution of merger triggering to the AGN population as a function of both luminosity and redshift, as well as new work using machine learning to help in the detection of mergers in large samples.