Physics of supermassive black hole accretion and feedback

Investigate and determine the physical processes governing supermassive black hole accretion in active galactic nuclei and characterize the properties and impacts of their energy‑ and matter‑driven winds on host galaxies to address currently unknown aspects of these central black holes.

Background

Blessing Musiimenta’s PhD research examines supermassive black holes (SMBHs) during active accretion phases (AGN) and focuses on detecting and characterizing strong winds and outflows. These outflows can regulate accretion and suppress star formation in host galaxies, making AGN feedback a key process in galaxy evolution.

She explicitly states that many aspects of SMBHs remain unknown, motivating the need to clarify accretion physics and feedback mechanisms. This problem is central to connecting SMBH growth with the observable properties of galaxies across cosmic time.

References

“These black holes are found at the centres of galaxies and play a critical role in shaping how galaxies evolve, but there is still a lot we don't understand about them.”

— Inspiring stories from women in astronomy in Africa  (2510.05195 - Muheki et al., 6 Oct 2025) in Section “Be kind to everyone and always do your best — Blessing Musiimenta”; Page 72 (profile)

Another is the widespread super-critical accretion that our model predicts at early times, which still awaits direct confirmation.

— BAQARO: Tracing Stochastic Black Hole Growth Histories and Quasar Lightcurves in a Cosmological Context  (2609.12061 - Pizzati et al., 10 Sep 2026) in Section 6, “Summary”

Whether and how black hole accretion continues once central star formation is suppressed remains an open observational question.

— Interplay of Compaction, Quenching, and Black Hole Growth in the Most Massive Galaxies since $z\sim5$: Insights from JWST and Chandra Data  (2608.24124 - Haryana et al., 25 Aug 2026) in Section 1, Introduction

The physical processes governing the increase in accretion rates and how they may be different from the HERGs remains unclear at present.

— Fundamental differences in the X-ray accretion properties of low and high-excitation radio galaxies  (2609.04130 - Kondapally et al., 3 Sep 2026) in Section 5, “The nature of LERGs and HERGs”

In Ton S180, the bar-like inner elongation and the residuals along the spiral-arm region are consistent with secular transport, but we cannot conclude whether inflowing motions are present within the circumnuclear ring, towards the nucleus.

— Super-Eddington Accretion and Early-Stage Feedback in Ton S180  (2609.04317 - Condò et al., 3 Sep 2026) in Section 6.2, “Fueling BH accretion from the host galaxy”