Kazushi Iwasawa

Universitat de Barcelona (UB)

Experimental Sciences & Mathematics

Born and educated in Japan. After obtaining his PhD in astrophysics at Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan, in 1995, he moved to Europe, working at the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge in UK (1995-2005), at the Max Planck Institut für Extraterrestrische Physik in Germany (2005-2008), and at INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Bologna in Italy (2008-2009). In 2010 he joined ICREA, to work as an ICREA Research Professor at the Institut de Ciències del Cosmos (ICCUB). His main research area is X-ray astronomy on active galaxies and cosmic black holes.


Research interests

Kazushi Iwasawa works in the field of observational astronomy, mainly using X-ray observatories in space. His primary interest is in the formation and evolution of supermassive black holes powering active galaxies. These active galaxies are generally strong X-ray emitters, which makes X-ray observations a powerful probe of black hole activity even at great cosmological distances. He is involved in several multi-wavelength survey projects which attempt to establish cosmic evolution of the black hole activity and its relation to the galaxy formation. He is also interested in observational study of relativistic effects operating at region close to the black hole in active galaxies through X-ray spectroscopy.

Selected publications

– Iwasawa K, Fabian AC, Kara E, Reynolds CS, Miniutti G & Tombesi F 2016, ‘Highly ionized disc and transient outflows in the Seyfert galaxy IRAS 18325-5926’, Astronomy and Astrophysics, 592, A98.

– Marchesi S, Lanzuisi G, Civano F, Iwasawa K, Suh H, Comastri A, Zamorani G, Allevato V, Griffiths R, Miyaji T, Ranalli P, Salvato M, Schawinski K, Silverman J, Treister E, Urry CM & Vignali C 2016, ‘The Chandra COSMOS-Legacy survey: Source X-ray spectral properties’, The Astrophysical Journal, 830, 100.

– Ricci C, Bauer FE, Treister E, Romero-Canizales C, Arevalo P, Iwasawa K, Privon GC, Sanders DB, Schawinski K, Stern D & Imanishi M ‘NuSTAR inveils a heavily obscured low-luminosity Active Galactic Nucleus in the Luminous Infrared Galaxy NGC 6286’, Astrophysical Journal, 819, 1, 4.

– Matsuoka Y, Onoue M, Kashikawa N, Iwasawa K, Strauss M, Nagao T, Imanishi M et al. 2016, ‘Subaru high-z exploration of low-luminosity quasars (SHELLQs). I. Discovery of 15 quasars and bright galaxies at 5.7 < z < 6.9’, The Astrophysical Journal, 828, 26.


Selected research activities

Observing times for Chandra X-ray Observatory, NuSTAR, Subaru 8-m telescope Intensive Program, GTC 10-m telescope were obtained for their open calls for proposals.