Quasars are the most luminous persistent sources in the sky, powered by rapid accretion onto a supermassive black hole in the center of a galaxy. The extreme energy output of a quasar is theorized to cause dramatic impacts on their host galaxies, like rapidly quenching star formation and launching enormous jets. But measuring the properties of a galaxy hosting a quasar is extremely difficult because the luminous quasar outshines the galaxy’s starlight. This is true even on large scales, since a galaxy’s outskirts can have an efficient “mirror” of gas and dust which scatters a large fraction of quasar light. We will use new, state-of-the-art computer simulations to measure the amount of scattered light in realistic galaxies hosting quasars. We will then connect these simulations to observations of nearby quasars, finally disentangling scattered quasar light from galaxy starlight and revealing if quasars really do have unusual effects on galaxy star formation.
Mentor: Jonathan Trump, Postdoctoral Scholar
Secondary Mentor: Mr. Chris Moody