Michael Boylan-Kolchin
University of California at Berkeley
Abstract:
I will discuss current ideas about the formation and evolution of massive galaxies and their central supermassive black holes. Many of these theories have been strongly influenced by the latest generation of numerical simulations, which are a powerful tool in helping us understand how galaxies evolve in merger events and how black holes (significantly) affect the properties of merger remnants. While mergers of gas-rich disk galaxies are thought to lead to the formation of elliptical galaxies, recent observational evidence suggests that merging of (gas-poor) elliptical galaxies is also an important process for galaxy evolution and for building up the most massive galaxies in the universe. I will present results of simulations of these mergers and argue that the large scale structure of dark matter plays an important role in producing observed properties of massive elliptical galaxies. These results also have important implications for the masses of the most massive black holes in the universe: I will suggest that standard estimates are likely too low, perhaps by up to a factor of three.