Modelling the polarised emission from black holes on event horizon-scales

Upcoming VLBI observations will resolve nearby supermassive black holes, most notably Sagittarius A* and M87, on event horizon-scales. Recent observations of Sagittarius A* with the Event Horizon Telescope have revealed horizon-scale structure. Accordingly, the detection and measurement of the back hole “shadow” is expected to enable the existence of astrophysical black holes to be verified directly. Although the theoretical description of the shadow is straightforward, its observational appearance is largely determined by the properties of the surrounding accretion flow, which is highly turbulent. We introduce a new polarised general-relativistic radiative transfer code, BHOSS, which accurately solves the equations of polarised radiative transfer in arbitrary strong-gravity environments, providing physically-realistic images of astrophysical black holes on event horizon-scales, as well as also providing insight into the fundamental properties and nature of the surrounding accretion flow environment.

Particle acceleration and the origin of the very high energy emission around black holes and relativistic jets

Particle acceleration induced by fast magnetic reconnection may help to solve current puzzles related to the interpretation of the very high energy (VHE) and neutrino emissions from AGNs and compact sources in general. Our general relativistic-MHD simulations of accretion disk-corona systems reveal the growth of turbulence driven by MHD instabilities that lead to the development of fast magnetic reconnection in the corona. In addition, our simulations of relativistic MHD jets reveal the formation of several sites of fast reconnection induced by current-driven kink turbulence. The injection of thousands of test particles in these regions causes acceleration up to energies of several PeVs, thus demonstrating the ability of this process to accelerate particles and produce VHE and neutrino emission, specially in blazars. Finally, we discuss how reconnection can also explain the observed VHE luminosity-black hole mass correlation, involving hundreds of non-blazar sources like Perseus A, and black hole binaries.

Cold gas studies of a z = 2.5 protocluster

We present studies of a protocluster at z =2.5, an overdense region found close to a radio galaxy, 4C 23.56, using ALMA. We observed 1.1 mm continuum, two CO lines (CO (4–3) and CO (3–2)) and the lower atomic carbon line transition ([CI](3P1-3P0)) at a few kpc (0″.3-0″.9) resolution. The primary targets are 25 star-forming galaxies selected as Hα emitters (HAEs) that are identified with a narrow band filter. These are massive galaxies with stellar masses of > 1010Mʘ that are mostly on the galaxy main sequence at z =2.5. We measure the molecular gas mass from the independent gas tracers of 1.1 mm, CO (3–2) and [CI], and investigate the gas kinematics of galaxies from CO (4–3). Molecular gas masses from the different measurements are consistent with each other for detection, with a gas fraction (fgas = Mgas/(Mgas+ Mstar)) of ≃ 0.5 on average but with a caveat. On the other hand, the CO line widths of the protocluster galaxies are typically broader by ˜50% compared to field galaxies, which can be attributed to more frequent, unresolved gas-rich mergers and/or smaller sizes than field galaxies, supported by our high-resolution images and a kinematic model fit of one of the galaxies. We discuss the expected scenario of galaxy evolution in protoclusters at high redshift but future large surveys are needed to get a more general view.

Tracing young SMBHs in the dusty distant universe – a Chandra view of DOGs

The coexistence of star formation and AGN activity has geared much attention to dusty galaxies at high redshifts, in the interest of understanding the origin of the Magorrian relation observed locally, where the mass of the stellar bulk in a galaxy appears to be tied to the mass of the underlying supermassive black hole. We exploit the combined use of far-infrared (IR) Herschel data and deep Chandra ˜160 ksec depth X-ray imaging of the COSMOS field to probe for AGN signatures in a large sample of >100 Dust-Obscured Galaxies (DOGs). Only a handful (˜20%) present individual X-ray detections pointing to the presence of significant AGN activity, while X-ray stacking analysis on the X-ray undetected DOGs points to a mix between AGN activity and star formation. Together, they are typically found on the main sequence of star-forming galaxies or below it, suggesting that they are either still undergoing significant build up of the stellar bulk or have started quenching. We find only ˜30% (6) Compton-thick AGN candidates (NH > 1024 cm–2), which is the same frequency found within other soft- and hard-X-ray selected AGN populations. This suggests that the large column densities responsible for the obscuration in Compton-thick AGNs must be nuclear and have little to do with the dust obscuration of the host galaxy. We find that DOGs identified to have an AGN share similar near-IR and mid-to-far-IR colors, independently of whether they are individually detected or not in the X-ray. The main difference between the X-ray detected and the X-ray undetected populations appears to be in their redshift distributions, with the X-ray undetected ones being typically found at larger distances. This strongly underlines the critical need for multiwavelength studies in order to obtain a more complete census of the obscured AGN population out to higher redshifts. For more details, we refer the reader to Riguccini et al. (2019).

Investigating the properties of a galaxy group at z = 0.6

Galaxy groups offer an important perspective on how the large-scale structure of the Universe has formed and evolved, being great laboratories to study the impact of the environment on the evolution of galaxies. We aim to investigate the properties of a galaxy group that is gravitationally lensing HELMS18, a submillimeter galaxy at z = 2.39. We obtained multi-object spectroscopy data using Gemini-GMOS to investigate the stellar kinematics of the central galaxies, determine its members and obtain the mass, radius and the numerical density profile of this group. Our final goal is to build a complete description of this galaxy group. In this work we present an analysis of its two central galaxies: one is an active galaxy with z = 0.59852 ± 0.00007, while the other is a passive galaxy with z = 0.6027 ± 0.0002. Furthermore, the difference between the redshifts obtained using emission and absorption lines indicates an outflow of gas with velocity v = 278.0 ± 34.3 km/s relative to the galaxy.

The DIVING3D Project: Analysis of the nuclear region of Early-type Galaxies

In this work, we present preliminary results regarding the nuclear emission lines of a statistically complete sample of 56 early-type galaxies that are part of the Deep Integral Field Spectroscopy View of Nuclei of Galaxies (DIVING3D) Project. All early type galaxies (ETGs) were observed with the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph Integral Field Unit (GMOS-IFU) installed on the Gemini South Telescope. We detected emission lines in 93% of the sample, mostly low-ionization nuclear emission-line region galaxies (LINERs). We did not find Transition Objects nor H II regions in the sample. Type 1 objects are seen in ∼23% of the galaxies.