Spewing Black Holes: Outflows from Active Galaxies

Rajib Ganguly

On the largest scales in the universe, baryons live in a cosmic web of filaments and sheets. Simulations of structure formation using gravity from dark matter as the principal driver successfully explain this cosmic web. However, the galaxies produced generally have too much gas and too many stars compared to actual galaxies. Other physical processes on smaller scales are needed to regulate the infall of gas into galaxies and the formation of stars. It is now recognized that the process that grows supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies likely plays an important role in that regulation. As a supermassive black hole grows, it also generates an outflow of material back into (and sometimes out of) the host galaxy. In this talk, I will described the current state of the art for cosmological simulations, our efforts to understand what drives outflows from supermassive black holes, and why/how they change from object to object.