Coevolution

News

Fall 2011. Together with Arjen van der Wel we organize the workshop Watching Galaxies Grow Up, from Dec 4.-9. at Ringberg Castle in Bavaria.

20 Oct 2011. It is time to introduce our new group member, Robert Singh, who came to us already in August for a PhD project jointly supervised by Knud and Glenn van de Ven on the topic of "The true nature of LINERs" using data from the CALIFA survey.

12 Oct 2011. Our group member Rene Andrae successfully defended his thesis on the "Alignments of Disc Galaxies" at the Ruperto Carola University of Heidelberg. Rene moves on to postdoctoral research in the Gaia group headed by Coryn Bailer-Jones, also at MPIA.

30 Sep 2011. Press release by MPIA/MPG on our paper on dynamical mass measurements of z=1.3 AGN host galaxy with VLT/SINFONI. Please see the projects page for details and background.

>>all news

Overview

Welcome to the Emmy Noether-research group at MPIA on the topic of "Coevolution of Galaxies and Black Holes", headed by Dr. Knud Jahnke. The group is funded by the German Science Foundation DFG since 09/2007.

A number of projects studies the influence and interaction of the formation of supermassive black holes in the centers of massive galaxies on the surrounding galaxy. The main aim is to constrain the relative interdependence of galaxy interactions, induced star formation, AGN activity and its effect on the migration of massive galaxies from. Keywords are: Starburst-merger-AGN connection and AGN feedback.

We highlight some of our projects - for a complete listing please see our publication page.

People

The group consists of:

• Dading Nugroho, graduate student (graduate from Institut Teknologi Bandung, Indonesia, since 08/2008)
• Dr. Knud Jahnke (group head)
• Dr. Katherine Inskip, postdoctoral researcher (formerly Sheffield University, since 03/2008)
• Mauricio Cisternas, graduate student (graduate from Universidad Catolica in Santiago de Chile, since 08/2008)
• Robert Singh, graduate student (graduate from University Gothenburg, Sweden, since 08/2011)

Former group members:

• Dr. René Andrae, former graduate student (05/2009-10/2011)

Project areas

Individual project areas are:

• Determining the bulge- or stellar mass vs. Black Hole-mass relation of galaxies out to z>2 and constrain its evolution over 10 Gyrs using data from the GEMS and COSMOS galaxy surveys with the HST and Laser Guide Star Adaptive Optics assisted Integral Field Spectroscopic data from SINFONI at ESO VLT.
• Studying the incidence of merging of galaxies for active galaxies in COSMOS in direct comparison to inactive galaxies as a function of redshift, luminosity and environment. A crucial aspect is finding the limits of which degree of interaction can actually be seen in HST images as a function of time since a galaxy merger.
• Studying the incidence, mass and ages of star-formation in AGN host galaxies as a function of galaxy luminosity, morphology and signs of interaction. We will use two spectroscopic datasets from FORS2 and the VIMOS IFU at ESO VLT.
• As a separate topic: Automatic detection of the sense of rotation in spiral galaxies using advanced classification methods.

Please see the projects page for more detailed highlights.