HEP@VUB meeting: 15:00 - 16:00

The growth of stellar mass in galaxies appears to be closely linked to the growth of the central supermassive black holes (SMBHs), despite the SMBH sphere of influence being orders of magnitude smaller than the galaxy size. Galaxy mergers are known to drive quasi-simultaneous SMBH accretion and bursts of star formation, and low-redshift mergers provide an excellent opportunity to study the driving physics on relevant physical scales. The "Great Observatories All-sky LIRG Survey" (GOALS) is a multi-wavelength study of extreme galaxies in the low-redshift Universe, designed to study the merger-driven co-evolution of galaxies and SMBHs. In the past few months, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has been delivered unprecedented data, including for several interacting systems in GOALS. The suite of near and mid-infrared instruments on JWST enable access to powerful diagnostics of star formation, black hole growth, and the physical conditions of the gas feeding both those processes. In this talk I will describe results from GOALS, identifying differences in the physical conditions for both the star formation gas as well as the environments of SMBHs compared to "normal" galaxies. I will conclude by highlighting the first JWST-GOALS results from a Director's Discretionary Time Early Release Science Program and describe planned Cycle 1 projects to identify the power sources of the most heavily obscured galaxy nuclei yet identified.