Our understanding of the Universe has progressed tremendously over the past decades. Yet, we still do not understand how galaxies – the building blocks of the Universe – form and evolve with cosmic time. What has become clear from cosmological simulations, as well as mounting evidence from observations, is that supermassive black holes play a fundamental and essential role in shaping the properties of galaxies. During this talk, I will review the current state of this field by focussing on our understanding of mechanical/jet-mode black hole feedback in massive galaxies. I will demonstrate that clusters of galaxies play a pivotal role in our understanding of this feedback mode. I will also present new results on the large-scale impact of black hole feedback in clusters of galaxies, as well its evolution in time, demonstrating that such feedback can be a long-lived and fundamental process in all massive galaxies.

Host: Michael McDonald