Peter Behroozi uses computational statistics to study links between dark matter halo assembly, galaxy formation, and the growth of supermassive black holes. His research involves generating simulated universes for millions of different physical models, with the aim of constraining which physics best describes current observations and which new observations would best improve our current understanding of galaxy and black hole formation. These methods are especially powerful as they allow combining many disparate observations (across different redshifts, environments, and formation tracers) into a self-consistent description of the Universe.
Talk Title and Abstract
Trinity: Unveiling the Connection between Halos, Galaxies, and Supermassive Black Holes
We present a new empirical model, Trinity, that observationally constrains the joint relationship between supermassive black holes (SMBHs), galaxies, and dark matter halos from z=0 to z=7. Trinity is unique in its ability to systematically combine constraints from a wide variety of SMBH and galaxy observations, allowing the resulting inferences to be free of theoretical assumptions that have been present in past models. We can hence recover the average growth and merger histories of all detectable SMBHs, describe the evolution of the SMBH—galaxy relationship through time, and even constrain the cosmic evolution of physical SMBH properties such as the radiative efficiency. We also provide a natural solution to the origin of the high accretion rates necessary to grow the largest SMBHs observed at z>6.
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