Andrea Sacchi: Massive Black Holes in Dwarf Galaxies

Tuesday 7 Apr 2026, 13:15 → 14:00 Europe/Stockholm

FB53 (AlbaNova Main Building)

Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) reside in the heart of virtually every massive galaxy. However, much less is known about whether dwarf galaxies commonly host massive black holes at their centers. These systems are of great interest because they can inform us about how black holes form and grow over cosmic time. I will present the constraints on the seeding and growing mechanisms of SMBHs that one can get from studying a sample of X-ray-selected accreting SMBHs in dwarf galaxies. This sample has been compiled exploiting eROISTA observations and represents one of the largest and least biased samples of such objects available to date.

About the speaker: My research interests revolve around accreting compact objects (ranging from white dwarfs to supermassive black holes at high redshift), which I observe mainly in the X-ray band. I obtained my PhD at the University of Florence, where I studied tidal disruption events and quasars. I did a postdoc at the Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, where I worked on active galactic nuclei in dwarf galaxies, AGN feedback, and little red dots.

In the OKC: A5 CoPS corridor