Objective An important question in modern cosmology concerns the formation and evolution of galaxes and galaxy clusters. Supermassive black holes are known to reside at the centers of most galaxies and are thought to be intimately linked to how galaxies form and evolve because we observe in the local universe a tight relationship between the mass of the black hole and the central spherical concentration of stars in the galaxy. What physical processes led to this relation is not known. Theoretical work suggest that the activity from an actively feeding black hole has significant impact on the host galaxy and its large scale environment to explain the lack of cold gas in the red massive ellipticals and the suppression of starformation in galaxy clusters with a hot but cooling intracluster gas. Central to most studies of mass structure formation and evolution is the mass of the black hole – one of its few fundamental characteristics. While we are currently able to estimate black hole masses to within a factor of a few, an amazing fact in itself, we need to constrain the mass estimates to a higher degree in order to make significant progress in our understanding of how black holes affect their large and small-scale environment. This will also enable critical testing of theoretical models of galaxy evolution. We propose a study to systematically investigate, identify, and quantify systematic biases that affect our current estimates of distant active black holes. This includes the effects of radiation pressure and Eddington ratio through a direct measurement of the bolometric luminosities of individual sources in our samples. This project is based mostly on existing data in public archives with additional data to be obtained with ESO's X-shooter on VLT and space-based telescopes. This project results include improved mass scaling laws for Hbeta, MgII, and CIV corrected for these biases and a database of mass estimates for the SDSS catalog of ~100,000 quasars. Fields of science natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesdatabasesnatural sciencesphysical sciencesastronomyastrophysicsblack holesnatural sciencesphysical sciencesastronomyphysical cosmologygalaxy evolutionsocial scienceslaw Programme(s) FP7-PEOPLE - Specific programme "People" implementing the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Community for research, technological development and demonstration activities (2007 to 2013) Topic(s) FP7-PEOPLE-2009-IIF - Marie Curie Action: "International Incoming Fellowships" Call for proposal FP7-PEOPLE-2009-IIF See other projects for this call Funding Scheme MC-IIF - International Incoming Fellowships (IIF) Coordinator KOBENHAVNS UNIVERSITET EU contribution € 278 986,00 Address NORREGADE 10 1165 Kobenhavn Denmark See on map Region Danmark Hovedstaden Byen København Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Administrative Contact Kristoffersen Ivan (Mr.) Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Total cost No data
