Title: "Simulating the Growth and Evolution of Supermassive Black Holes and their Host Galaxies"

Abstract:

Observations suggest that Supermassive Black Holes (SMBHs) co-evolve with their host galaxies and that the two influence each other through accretion events and feedback processes. Modeling SMBH growth in the context of galaxy formation requires understanding of a large range of scales, from cosmological all the way down to the accretion disk of the black hole (> 8 orders of magnitude!). With the numerical technique of adaptive mesh refinement (AMR), we are able to study a large dynamical range by "zooming in" to the region of interest within a cosmological simulation. The technique allows us to model matter and angular momentum transport on a range of scales, over cosmological times, and hence study how the black hole and galaxy co-evolve.