CAREER: The Highest and Lowest- Mass Black Holes in the Nuclei of Nearby Galaxies

University Of California-Irvine, Irvine CA

Investigators

Abstract

Dr. Aaron Barth at the University of California, Irvine, will undertake a program to provide new constraints on the correlation between black hole mass and host galaxy velocity dispersion, and on the mass function of supermassive black holes. The work will incorporate two complementary areas for research. Dynamical measurements of black hole masses will be performed for the most massive nearby galaxies, to provide new constraints on the upper end of the black hole mass function (above 109 solar masses). The other research area involves a study of the population of galaxies with black holes having masses below 106 solar masses, including new measurements of the black hole masses in these objects and new observations to determine the structure of their host galaxies. Dr. Barth will also undertake efforts targeted toward the expansion and enhancement of the undergraduate astrophysics program at UC Irvine, with a new initiative to integrate research training into the curriculum. He will co-create and teach a new undergraduate observational astronomy laboratory course for junior or senior-level undergraduates. The goal is to give students a hands-on introduction to research methods and prepare them to undertake senior thesis work and summer research projects in observational astronomy. As a major part of the development of the new lab course, Dr. Barth will add new capabilities to his astronomical image viewing and analysis software, written in the IDL image-processing language. This software, called ATV, has been freely available on the World Wide Web for the past six years and is widely used for interactive display and analysis of astronomical images in both educational and research environments at universities and observatories worldwide.