Yuan Li

Columbia University, PhD Candidate

Shaping Galaxies with Supermassive Black Holes

A recent discovery of the correlation between the mass of the central supermassive black holes and the mass of the galactic bulges indicates that the feedback from black holes may drastically influence their host galaxies. Considering the fact that the central black holes are usually less than 1% of the bulge mass, one might wonder: how does something very small determine the evolution of something very large? In this talk, I will discuss the possible mechanisms through which supermassive black holes can regulate the star formation and the growth of their host galaxies.