Résumé / Abstract Seminaire_IAP
« The transient sky and understanding the growth of supermassive black holes »

Natalie Webb
Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie (Toulouse, France)

The origin of supermassive black holes is still unclear. Different theories are proposed, including those that entail seed black holes with masses between 100 and 100000 solar masses, probably formed in the early Universe, which accrete and/or merge to form supermassive black holes. Other theories involve super-Eddington accretion, however the physical mechanism is still to be determined.

To understand the origin and the growth of supermassive black holes, it is necessary to search for and determine the population of seed, or intermediate mass black holes (IMBH), and identify where they reside, which can provide clues on their origin and study how they evolve. Understanding the physical mechanism behind prolonged super-Eddington accretion will also allow us to understand the black hole growth. Studying X-ray sources can give us insight into these questions. During this seminar I will introduce the XMM-Newton catalogue, 4XMM, and new methodology that is being put into place that allows us to identify new transients, which is one way to identify tidal disruption events that house IMBH and highly variable ultra-luminous X-ray sources which give us insight into super-Eddington accretion. I will show some of the results achieved to date and discuss what can be done in the future to finally understand the growth of supermassive black holes.
vendredi 21 mai 2021 - 11:00
Amphithéâtre Henri Mineur, Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris
Page web du séminaire / Seminar's webpage