Restricted Research - Award List, Note/Discussion Page
Fiscal Year: 2023
112 University of North Texas (142000)
Principal Investigator: Li,Yuan
Total Amount of Contract, Award, or Gift (Annual before 2011): $ 285,817
Exceeds $250,000 (Is it flagged?): Yes
Start and End Dates: 7/1/22 - 6/30/25
Restricted Research: YES
Academic Discipline: Physics
Department, Center, School, or Institute: College of Science
Title of Contract, Award, or Gift: Connecting Galaxies and Supermassive Black Holes: Meso-scale Simulations of Multiphase Accretion Flow
Name of Granting or Contracting Agency/Entity:
National Aeronautics & Space Administration
CFDA Link: NASA
43.001
Program Title:
none
CFDA Linked: Aerospace Education Services Program
Note:
The proposed research will serve as an important step towards a complete picture of the SMBH feeding-feedback cycle in the lowredshift universe. Our proposal takes advantage of a newly developed nested zoom-in technique that has been successfully used in studies of the hot accretion flow onto the SMBH in our own Milky Way. This technique allows us to initialize higher-resolution, smaller-scale simulations with conditions drawn from larger-scale simulations. We will simulate three representative systems with varying masses, from the central galaxy of a massive galaxy cluster to a typical group central. Out of the three systems, we will first focus on M87, the central galaxy of the nearby Virgo cluster, which now has rich observational data available from galactic scales all the way down to the event horizon. We will examine the physical properties of the meso-scale accretion flows, and how they depend on the mass of the system and the stage of the SMBH feedback cycle. Our proposed research will bridge a gap in our current theoretical understanding of SMBH accretion and will provide realistic initial conditions for horizon-scale GRMHD simulations. The findings will also be used to inform galaxy-scale simulations and large-scale cosmological simulations of galaxy formation and evolution. The proposed theoretical work is tightly connected to observations. In particular, it bears direct relevance for the observations of several NASA space missions, including Chandra and the Hubble Space Telescope. It will provide theoretical guidance on the interpretation of existing observations related to SMBH accretion, black hole mass measurements, and SMBH variability studies, as well as making predictions for future missions.
Discussion: No discussion notes