Scientific Colloquium
April 13, 2012

         NIEL BRANDT
        PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY

"A Good Hard Look at Cosmic Supermassive Black Hole Growth"

Deep cosmological X-ray surveys with the Chandra and XMM-Newton observatories have revolutionized our ability to find and characterize distant active galactic nuclei (AGNs), the main sites of supermassive black hole growth in the Universe. I will describe some of the resulting discoveries about the demography, physics, and ecology of AGNs. Topics covered will include the utility of deep X-ray plus multiwavelength surveys for investigating distant AGNs; evolution constraints for the typical AGNs of the distant Universe; the cosmic balance of power between supermassive black holes and stars; the luminosity and redshift dependences of AGN accretion and obscuration; AGN host galaxies and what they imply about AGN/galaxy interactions; and the AGN content of forming galaxies at high redshift. I will end by discussing some key outstanding questions about distant AGNs and prospects for answering them with new observations and missions.

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