Seminari
Monday 08/02/2021 @ 14:30, Sala riunioni quarto piano (remote)
Lea Marcotulli (Clemson University), "Chasing supermassive black holes at the dawn of the Universe"
Accreting supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies are sometimes capable of powering extreme relativistic jets. When pointed close to our line of sight, these are called blazars. The jet’s peculiar orientation makes these monsters shine as bright as a hundred trillion Suns and enables us to find them at the dawn of time, when the universe was barely 1-2 billion years old. Finding more such sources and understanding their evolution is key to set robust constraints on the evolution of jets and supermassive black holes through cosmic time. In this talk, I will present the core of my thesis work which was aimed at: (i) finding the most extreme and distant powerful blazars and measure their jet power and black hole mass through multi-wavelength (radio to gamma-rays) studies; (ii) understanding the evolution of this source class. I will particularly highlight our most recent results on the evolution of the most powerful persistent objects in the Universe.