A Multi-Scale Exploration of Supermassive Black Holes in the Multi-Messenger Era

Brief Description: Supermassive black holes are the engines driving galaxy evolution. Found at the centres of most galaxies, including the Milky Way, they unleash vast amounts of energy as gas spirals inwards. However, accurately modelling this black hole feedback remains a monumental task, spanning an extraordinary range of scales – from the event horizon, just minutes in light travel time, to the cosmic web, which supplies gas to galaxies and stretches over billions of light years. Hence, past cosmological simulations have relied on simplified black hole models that often lack physical grounding, limiting their predictive power. Recent groundbreaking observations, such as those from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and global radio telescopes, have uncovered many more supermassive black holes in the early Universe and a stronger gravitational wave signal from supermassive black hole mergers than anticipated, underscoring the urgent need for advanced black hole models. My proposed research programme will address this critical challenge by focusing on the hearts of galaxies, using highly accurate black hole models derived from general-relativistic simulations. This approach will enable me to uncover how the first supermassive black holes formed and grew in the early Universe, as observed by JWST. For the first time, I will integrate machine learning with supercomputer simulations to trace the interconnected evolution of supermassive black holes and the large-scale cosmos, extending my model to the entire galaxy population. By making precise predictions for both electromagnetic and gravitational-wave observations, my ultimate goal is to reveal how supermassive black holes shape the Universe.