Carol Rifelj Lecture Series: Hungry Monsters: Feeding and Quenching of Black Holes

The existence of supermassive black holes, with millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun, residing at the centers of galaxies throughout the universe is well supported by a substantial body of indirect and, more recently, direct imaging evidence. When mass is pulled into a black hole gravitationally, in a process called ‘accretion’, a tremendous amount of energy is released signaling this growth in the form of a ‘quasar’. This growth is stochastic and episodic with a variety of routes for triggering and quenching. Eilat’s research focuses on understanding the quasar phenomenon which addresses how these black holes grow to such extreme masses, what makes them stop growing, and how this growth influences the black hole’s host galaxy. In this talk, Eilat will present the work she has done to identify statistically significant and complete samples of quasars. Eilat uses these samples to constrain different stages of evolution in a quasar’s life cycle and the physical processes by which they forever impact their host galaxies.