research
RESEARCH NEWS
Feeding supermassive black holes
'An increase in black hole activity in galaxies with kinematically misaligned gas'
Together with my collaborators from the University of Copenhagen and UCLA, we found the first observational evidence that galaxies with misaligned gas have a higher fraction of active supermassive black holes.
Misaligned gas is a signature of a past galaxy interaction and therefore our findings connect the gas acquired during galaxy interactions with the fuelling of the supermassive black hole.
For our study we use observations of more than 3000 galaxies from the SAMI survey.
Our research was published in Nature Astronomy and covered by the University of Southampton news team and the press (e.g. Phys.org, ScienceDaily, Space.com).
intermediate mass black holes
'A fast-rising tidal disruption event from a candidate intermediate-mass black hole'
A star that was disrupted by the gravitational influence of a black hole allowed us to identify one of the elusive intermediate mass black holes, with a mass of 104.7 – 105.9 times the mass of our Sun.
The discovery led by Dr. Charlotte Angus of the Niels Bohr Institute in collaboration with our Young Supernova Experiment team, used the detection of a transient event (a tidal disruption event) to study the properties of the black hole.
Our results were published in Nature Astronomy and covered in Space.com.
The fact that we were able to capture this midsize black hole whilst it devoured a star offered us a remarkable opportunity to detect what otherwise would have been hidden from us.
Dr. Charlotte Angus
Research Interests
My main research interests are on supermassive black holes, Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) and their host galaxies. I am particularly interested in black hole accretion physics, gas dynamics, AGN fuelling and galaxy evolution. I am also interested in black hole transients and time domain astrophysics as a part of the Young Supernova Experiment survey.
Selection of first-author articles by topic
1) Gas dynamics in the AGN broad line region
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Modelling the AGN broad line region using single-epoch spectra II. Nearby AGN
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Modelling the AGN broad line region using single-epoch spectra I. The test case of Arp 151
2) Counter-rotation and AGN fuelling
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An increase in black hole activity in galaxies with kinematically misaligned gas (free access here)
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External gas accretion provides a fresh gas supply to the active S0 galaxy NGC 5077 (and a short news article here)
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Tracing the origin of the AGN fuelling reservoir in MCG-6-30-15
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The black hole and central stellar population of MCG-6-30-15
3) Changing-look AGN
4) Black hole accretion physics
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Can we measure the accretion efficiency of active galactic nuclei?
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Radiation pressure, absorption and AGN feedback in the Chandra Deep Fields
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Eddington ratio and accretion efficiency in active galactic nuclei evolution