Most of my research time is focussed on understanding active galactic nuclei (AGN), which are some of the most enigmatic objects the universe. I have been studying AGN in the infrared since my Ph.D. and currently co-lead a group of astronomers from around the world to exploit data from facilities such as ALMA, JWST, and the 8m's.
The myriad of properties exhibited by AGN have been accounted for through invoking the presence of a torus, which from some lines of sight can obscure the central engine (accretion of gas and dust on to a black hole). For over two decades the torus was envisioned as an optically and geometrically thick structure, essentially the innermost part of the host galaxy disk. IR continuum fitting has begun to reveal the some of its structural properties in this context. However, a variety of recent observations at mid-IR (MIR, ~7-25 μm) wavelengths have begun to show that in many cases much of the observed continuum emission is oriented along a polar axis. Several have argued that this is associated with a dusty disk wind. It is now understood that the torus is the central structure in a gas flow cycle in which gas is brought in from the host galaxy disk and then driven out by the AGN in a wind.
Most of this work is done in collaboration with the GATOS, and we are eagerly waiting JWST MIRI data. The key people working with me at UTSA on this project are Dr. Lulu Zhang, Dr. Lindsay Fuller, and Mr. John Schneider
