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DTSTART;TZID="Pacific Time (US & Canada)":20250911T121000
DTEND;TZID="Pacific Time (US & Canada)":20250911T124000
SUMMARY:Physics & Astronomy Colloquium – Dr. Kate Grier
LOCATION:Webster Physical Science Building, Pullman, WA 99163
DESCRIPTION:"Probing Supermassive Black Holes and Quasars with the SDSS-V Black Hole Mapper Reverberation Mapping Project"\n\nOne of the major areas of exploration in astrophysics is the study of how galaxies form and evolve. All massive galaxies have a supermassive black hole at their center, and observations suggest that the growth of the galaxies and their central supermassive black holes are linked. In order to understand how galaxies evolve, we thus also need understand how their central black holes grow and how these black holes interact with their host galaxies. To do this, we use observations of active galactic nuclei and quasars, which are actively accreting supermassive black holes that emit a tremendous amount of energy, visible across the entire observable universe. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) is monitoring thousands of quasars over more than decade to explore supermassive black holes and quasars at a wide range of distances. We have collected hundreds of spectra each for thousands of quasars as a part of the SDSS-V Black Hole Mapper Reverberation Mapping Project (BHM-RM). While the main goal of this program is to measure black hole masses using a technique called reverberation mapping, these spectra have also allowed us to explore variability in quasars and learn about supermassive black holes from numerous different angles, ranging from studies of broad absorption-line variability in quasar spectra, to studies of extreme variability events. I will give an overview of the BHM-RM project and highlight some of the work that we have been doing that has been enabled by this unprecedented spectral dataset.
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