Wide-field time-domain surveys such as the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) are providing new insight into the early-universe seeding and accretion/merger-driven growth of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) via transient phenomena from important SMBH sub-populations. These rare sub-populations include: ‘hidden’ low mass AGN in dwarf galaxies, analogs to early MBH seeds; SMBHs ejected from galactic nuclei during mergers; ‘state-changing’ AGN with recently triggered episodes of accretion; and ‘disk-emitting’ broad-line AGN which reveal the geometries of AGN accretion disks. In this colloquium, I will discuss how ZTF has enabled the discovery and follow-up of AGN which are amongst these rare sub-populations, with a focus on the evolving accretion disk profiles observed amongst samples of disk-emitting AGN, changing-state AGN, and tidal disruption events. I will also present recent work on the optically variable AGN discovered out to redshift 4 in the deep Hyper Suprime Cam transient survey, including the effort to constrain the fraction of ‘wandering’ SMBHs located outside of their galaxy nuclei as a function of galaxy mass. Finally, I will explain how multi-resolution image analysis techniques, which combine time-resolved ground and space-based survey data, are enabling us to better extract the spectra, positions and morphologies of transients and their host galaxies for an even wider range of applications, with an eye to the future with LSST, Euclid and Roman.

Astro Colloquium and 'coffee & cookies' department gathering (3:30-3:45pm)

Please join in 538 Davey or click the link to join: https://psu.zoom.us/j/93131536409