Related papers: Why are AGN found in High Mass Galaxies?
A fundamental role is attributed to supermassive black holes (SMBH), and the feedback they generate, in the evolution of galaxies. But theoretical models trying to reproduce the relation between the SMBH mass and stellar velocity dispersion…
Recent systematic searches for massive black holes (BHs) in local dwarf galaxies led to the discovery of a population of faint Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN). We investigate the agreement of the BH and AGN populations in the Illustris, TNG,…
Galaxy mergers are transformative events that can cause gaseous inflows capable of triggering active galactic nuclei (AGN). Previous studies of AGN in simulations have mainly focused on major interactions (i.e. between approximately equal…
We study supermassive black holes (BHs) in merging galaxies, using a suite of hydrodynamical simulations with very high spatial (~10 pc) and temporal (~1 Myr) resolution, where we vary the initial mass ratio, the orbital configuration, and…
One of the key open questions in cosmology today pertains to understanding when, where and how super massive black holes form, while it is clear that mergers likely play a significant role in the growth cycles of black holes, how…
The growth of supermassive black holes by merging and accretion in hierarchical models of galaxy formation is studied by means of Monte Carlo simulations. A tight linear relation between masses of black holes and masses of bulges arises if…
Major galaxy mergers are thought to play an important part in fuelling the growth of supermassive black holes. However, observational support for this hypothesis is mixed, with some studies showing a correlation between merging galaxies and…
Beyond all reasonable doubt, black holes are commonly found in the nuclei of most normal galaxies. In recent years, dynamical measurements of hole masses have transformed the study of their functioning and evolution. In particular, relating…
We examine the host morphologies of heavily obscured active galactic nuclei (AGN) at $z\sim1$ to test whether obscured supermassive black hole growth at this epoch is preferentially linked to galaxy mergers. Our sample consists of 154…
Motivated by observational searches for massive black hole (MBH) pairs at kiloparsec separations we develop a semi-analytic model to describe their orbital evolution under the influence of stellar and gaseous dynamical friction (DF). The…
We simulate mergers between galaxies containing collisionally-relaxed nuclei around massive black holes (MBHs). Our galaxies contain four mass groups, representative of old stellar populations; a primary goal is to understand the…
The origin of the black hole mergers detected by LIGO and Virgo remains an open question. While the unusual mass and spin of a few events constrain their possible astrophysical formation mechanisms, it is difficult to classify the bulk of…
Black-hole masses of the highest redshift quasars (4 <~ z <~ 6) are estimated using a previously presented scaling relationship, derived from reverberation mapping of nearby quasars, and compared to quasars at lower redshift. It is shown…
The observational link between Supermassive Black Holes (SMBH) and galaxies at low redshift seems to be very tight, and statistically the global evolution of star formation activity and BH accretion activity also seem to trace each other…
At the highest redshifts, z>6, several tens of luminous quasars have been detected. The search for fainter AGN, in deep X-ray surveys, has proven less successful, with few candidates to date. An extrapolation of the relationship between…
The distribution of black hole masses in galaxies is constrained by photometric and kinematic studies of individual galaxies, and by the properties of the quasar population. I review our understanding of these topics, present new results of…
Mergers between stellar-mass black holes will be key sources of gravitational radiation for ground-based detectors. However, the rates of these events are highly uncertain, given that such systems are invisible. One formation scenario…
Mergers of galaxies are thought to cause significant gas inflows to the inner parsecs, which can activate rapid accretion onto supermassive black holes (SMBHs), giving rise to Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN). During a significant fraction of…
The correlation between the mass of supermassive black holes in galaxy nuclei and the mass of the galaxy spheroids or bulges (or more precisely their central velocity dispersion), suggests a common formation scenario for galaxies and their…
We have investigated the gas content of a sample of several hundred AGN host galaxies at z$<$1 and compared it with a sample of inactive galaxies, matched in bins of stellar mass and redshift. Gas masses have been inferred from the dust…