OT2_vwild_2: Caught in the Middle: Post-Starbursts as Transitions from Ultraluminous Infrared Galaxies to Massive Ellipticals

One of the outstanding tasks in modern astrophysics is to uncover the physical mechanisms responsible for the observed tight correlation between super massive black hole mass, and host galaxy bulge mass and stellar velocity dispersion (M_BH-sigma relation). Numerical simulations invoke major mergers and interactions between massive, gas rich galaxies to reproduce the observed relation, along with the ULIRG number density, QSO luminosity function, black hole mass function and mass density. However, observational evidence for these suggested scenarios is either unavailable or inconclusive. Here we propose to measure the far-infrared continuum and line properties of a unique sample of massive, dusty, obscured AGN, to reveal whether they are the descendants of ULIRGs and progenitors of massive elliptical galaxies. These 12 galaxies contribute around 10% of the total black hole accretion rate summed over a complete sample of nearly 17,000 local (z