How Super-Massive Black Holes grow and shape galaxies. The promise of the Athena X-ray observatory
Abstract
X-ray observations are essential to understand and find AGN, as they are emitted from a few Schwarzschild radii from the central Super-Massive Black Hole, they can escape through relatively large amounts of obscuring material and contamination by the host galaxy is minute. The launch of ESA's Athena X-ray observatory in the late 2020s will revolutionise our knowledge about the AGN phenomenon and their demographics. Athena will consist of a large X-ray imaging telescope with two focal plane instruments offering wide-field sensitive imaging and integral field high-resolution X-ray spectroscopy. Athena will be able to constrain the geometry of accretion disk/corona through X-ray reverberation, measure SMBH spins of tens of AGN, measure AGN radiative and mechanical energy output in local and distant AGN, see perform a complete census of obscured and unobscured AGN out to z~2-3 and find hundreds of growing SMBH at z>6 well into the re-ionisation epoch. Athena will complement and work in synergy with other contemporary facilities (ESO's VLT/E-ELT and ALMA among others) to achieve these and other science objectives related to AGN.
- Publication:
-
Active Galactic Nuclei: What's in a Name?
- Pub Date:
- August 2016
- DOI:
- 10.5281/zenodo.60472
- Bibcode:
- 2016agnw.confE..56B
- Keywords:
-
- Active Galactic Nuclei;
- Zenodo community agn2016