Piecing Together the Dining Habits of Supermassive Black Holes with Peter Boorman

All large galaxies are expected to have a supermassive black hole lurking at their center. Most of the interstellar material that spirals in to feed these monsters is accreted behind thick clouds of gas and dust that obscure and conceal many electromagnetic signatures of the accretion flow. The abundance of accreting supermassive black holes hiding behind such dense material provides important insights into the region between interstellar space and the accretion disc, as well as the co-evolution between supermassive black holes and galaxies across cosmic time. However, a fundamental requirement that has proven difficult to date is to identify the most obscured systems with approximately equal efficacy as the (often brighter) less-obscured population. In this talk, I will overview the strengths and weaknesses of observing at different wavelengths in the pursuit of increasingly complete samples of nearby accreting supermassive black holes. I will then present NuLANDS — one of the largest NuSTAR legacy surveys ever performed, based on combined mid-to-far infrared selection and broadband X-ray constraints, aimed at constructing a less obscuration-biased census of active supermassive black holes in the local universe. I will conclude with prospects for the future, including some new radio-based studies that hold potential in uncovering and understanding the most obscured supermassive black hole activity currently known.

Sponsored by the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences.