Coevolution

News

04 Jun 2010. New results on the origin of black hole-galaxy scaling relations submitted for publication in ApJL: They are a natural product of galaxy formation without the need for a physical driver.

30 Nov 2009. ESO press release on "HE0450-2958: Black Hole Caught Zapping Galaxy into Existence?" Please see our projects page for background.

27 Oct 2009. New paper on the evolution of the MBH-Mstellar-relation over the last 9 Gyrs accepted for publication in ApJL.

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)
• René Andrae, graduate student (graduate from University of Heidelberg, Germany, since 05/2009)
• 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)

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.