Meredith Powell (Astronomy) - Stanford University

Title: Probing the Halo-Scale Environments of X-ray AGN

Abstract: The spatial clustering statistics of AGN can characterize the host dark matter halos and large-scale environments of accreting supermassive black holes. Understanding this AGN-halo connection provides powerful insights on the intertwined stories of structure growth, black hole growth, and galaxy evolution. Using AGN detected from state-of-the-art X-ray+multiwavelength surveys, I present the clustering measurements of X-ray-detected AGN as a function of various AGN properties. To interpret these measurements, I forward-model AGN in cosmological simulations to determine the main drivers of AGN clustering and to constrain the relationship between black holes and their host halos.

Bio: Merry Powell is a Porat Postdoctoral Fellow at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC) at Stanford University. She researches the growth of supermassive black holes and how they co-evolve with the galaxies and dark matter halos that host them, and recently received her PhD in Physics from Yale University.