About the Group

The energy output of actively accreting supermassive black holes (active galactic nuclei, AGN) has become a critical ingredient in modern galaxy formation theories and is widely considered to be the main driver in regulating the growth of massive galaxies. This energy typically exceeds the binding energy of a galaxy, such that even if only a few percent of that energy couples to the gas, gas may be heated and/or driven outside the galaxy which can effectively quench star formation activity. The critical role of AGN in galaxy formation was hypothesised two decades ago, yet this paradigm only recently obtained observational support and specific observational evidence of AGN-driven feedback has been surprisingly hard to come by. The group's research focuses on finding concrete observational evidence for the self-regulation of supermassive black holes and their host galaxies, on understanding the power, reach and impact of feedback processes exerted by AGN, and on the role of AGN in galaxy evolution at all cosmic epochs. The group aims to characterise the internal structure and the multi-phase nature of AGN feedback signatures, determine outflow masses and energetics, and inventory the sources of gas excitation. To achieve these ambitious goals, data from state-of-the-art ground- and space-based telescopes are being used to determine the physical properties of AGN-driven winds and to measure how and how much gas they can remove from their host galaxies. Specifically, the group leverages and will continue to leverage integral field unit observations, including data from the approved JWST Early Release Science program Q3D, which yield complex datasets probing spatially resolved stellar and gas kinematics and enable fundamentally new methods of investigating AGN feedback.

This group started its work in September 2020 and is funded through an Emmy Noether Grant of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) and acknowledges support through the Daimler und Benz Stiftung , the MERAC foundation and the BMBF.

Team Members

Group Lead

Dr. Dominika Wylezalek                                                           
Email: dominika.wylezalek at uni-heidelberg.de
Link to ADS Library
Personal Website

Postdocs

Dr. Caroline Bertemes                                                                                                          
Email: c.bertemes at uni-heidelberg.de
Personal Website

Dr. Pranav Kukreti                                                                                                          
Email: kukreti at uni-heidelberg.de
Personal Website

Dr. Bruno Dall'Agnol de Oliveira                                                                                                          
Email: bruno.ddeo at gmail.com

PhD Students

Mr. Marco Albán, MSc                                                                                                          
Email: malban@uni-heidelberg.de
Project Title: Mapping AGN-driven outflows in MaNGA AGN

Mr. Rodrigo Freitas, MSc                                                                                                          
Email: rodrigofloresdefreitas at gmail.com
Project Title:

Master Students

Julian Groth, BSc                                                                                                          
Email: julian.t.groth@gmail.com
Project Title: JWST IFU analysis of high-redshift radio galaxies

Delvin Ahmeti                                                                                                          
Email: yu-ruei.wang at stud.uni-heidelberg.dee
Internship: Exploring data cubes of low-z AGN

Former Group Members

Benjamin Beckmann, MSc
Jelena Ritter, MSc, now PhD Student at MPA Garching
Dr. Wuji Wang, now postdoc at Caltech / IPAC
Virginia Lenk, BSc, now ESA intern and student in Heidelberg
Jan Beckmann, MSc
Yu-Ruei Wang, BSc
Kolja Reuter, BSc, now Master student in Heidelberg
Payel Nandi, MSc, PhD student at IAA, Bangalore
Simon Flesch, BSc, Master student at Paris Sciences & Lettres University
Chuanming Mao, now MSc student at MPIA Heidelberg