Two exceptional papers by MPA students
During the MPA garden party, the Rudolf-Kippenhahn-Prize for the best scientific paper written in the past year by a student at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics was awarded to two students: Silvia Almada Monter for “Crossing walls and windows: the curious escape of Lyman-α photons through ionized channels” and Christian Partmann for “The importance of nuclear star clusters for massive black hole growth and nuclear star formation in simulated low-mass galaxies”. The prize is awarded to recognize originality, a large impact on science but also the quality of writing for a publication to which students themselves made substantial contributions.
Silvia’s remarkable paper on Lyman-alpha radiative transfer through anisotropic media changes completely how we (should) think about Lyman-alpha radiative transfer. Her results challenge long-standing assumptions about how these photons escape from galaxies, pointing instead to an entirely new physical picture — one so counterintuitive that her supervisor Max Gronke spent months convinced it had to be wrong.
Despite Max’s doubt, Silvia methodically tested every piece of the old and new theory, combining simulations and analytics with impressive care and clarity. The result is not just a deep and original contribution, but also a beautifully written paper. Go ahead and read it — it is amazing (and it’s short!).
In the second paper, Christian investigated the – poorly understood – growth processes of intermediate mass black holes (IMBHs) in the centers of low-mass galaxies. The paper is based an original idea that Christian proposed, and for which he independently developed the more realistic setup necessary to study the idea. His work reveals that nuclear star clusters facilitate the rapid growth of central seed black holes into intermediate-mass black holes within a few hundred million years. Whereas without nuclear star clusters, the seed black holes show minimal growth.
The accretion cycles of the growing black holes are regulated by nuclear star formation and supernova explosions, which may explain the observed coexistence of nuclear star clusters and intermediate-mass black holes. Christian’s study emphasises the importance of considering these star clusters in future research. This excellent paper represents a significant theoretical advancement, highlighting the power of precise numerical models to uncover important physical processes in black-hole growth through gas accretion.
