A Good Hard Look at Cosmic Supermassive Black Hole Growth - Durham University Astronomy Colloquium

This is a recording of a talk titled "A Good Hard Look at Cosmic Supermassive Black Hole Growth" given to the Durham University Astronomy Research Cluster (2020 November 4, presented remotely owing to COVID-19). The talk covers the utility of X-ray surveys of active galaxies; a description of the Chandra Deep Fields; some selected science results from the Chandra Deep Fields; and some future prospects for X-ray surveys. The speaker is Prof. W.N. Brandt from the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics at the Pennsylvania State University, and the talk is being given on behalf of the Chandra Deep Fields and XMM-SERVS teams. The talk has overlap with some of my other talks on RUclips, but there is also significant new material and useful updates.
The talk abstract is the following: The 7 Ms Chandra X-ray Observatory exposure on the Chandra Deep Field-South (CDF-S) has provided the most sensitive extragalactic X-ray survey by a wide margin. About 1050 X-ray sources have been detected, primarily distant active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and starburst/normal galaxies. The unmatched deep multiwavelength coverage for these sources allows superb follow-up investigations, revealing the details of supermassive black hole growth over most of cosmic time. I will briefly describe the sources in the 7 Ms CDF-S and highlight some exciting science results. The latter will include (1) evidence for black-hole vs. bulge co-evolution and galaxy compactness connections in the distant universe; (2) constraints on supermassive black hole growth in the first galaxies as revealed by direct detection and stacking; and (3) the discovery of representatives of a new population of faint, fast X-ray transient sources. Finally, I will discuss some future prospects for X-ray surveys of AGNs in the distant universe, including the ongoing 5 Ms XMM-SERVS survey of the LSST Deep Drilling Fields and new X-ray missions.
Some more details about the Chandra Deep Fields and XMM-SERVS can be found at
personal.psu.edu/wnb3/cdfs/cdf... and
personal.psu.edu/wnb3/hdf/hdf-... and
personal.psu.edu/wnb3/xmmservs...