The rise of supermassive black holes

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We search for black holes across the entire history of the Universe from its earliest epochs to the present day. We focus on those with the highest masses and fastest growth rates. We seek to understand the origin and growth history of the most extreme black holes, and we study their accretion flows, super-heated cosmic hurricanes, which make them the brightest objects in the Universe. Part of the puzzle involves looking at less active black holes, looking at how their accretion flows change over months, years, and decades. 

We identify candidates from a range of surveys including SkyMapper, Gaia, WISE. We study their variability with NASA/ATLAS, and their X-ray properties with eROSITA. We use spectroscopy at the ANU 2.3m telescope, at the 4.1m SOAR, at the 8.2m ESO VLT and at Magellan, as well as archival data. We now also use interferometry at the ESO VLTI, which has no competition in the world in spatially resolving the accretion flows of these objects. And we are exploring modifications to the theory of accretion discs, which has originally been built for stellar-mass black holes.