Cake Talk by Alex Pope
The rate of star formation and supermassive black hole growth in galaxies has been decreasing over the last 10 billion years. I will present results from a Cycle 1 program aimed at understanding this decline by localizing and quantifying the active galactic nucleus (AGN), spatially resolving the star formation activity, and measuring the interstellar medium (ISM) conditions in infrared-luminous galaxies during this declining epoch. Mid-IR spectroscopy is a powerful way to separate the AGN and star formation energetics in galaxies, and only now with MIRI/MRS are we able to detect the rich atomic lines to quantify the black hole accretion rates and spatially resolve the star formation outside the local Universe. This program provides a valuable dataset bridging the local and high redshift Universe by testing diagnostics of the AGN, star formation and ISM conditions at intermediate redshifts so they can be extended to higher redshifts.