Related papers: Why are AGN found in High Mass Galaxies?
When two black holes merge in a dense star cluster, they form a new black hole with a well-defined mass and spin. If that "second-generation" black hole remains in the cluster, it will continue to participate in dynamical encounters, form…
While it is generally believed that supermassive black holes (SMBH) lie in most galaxies with bulges, few SMBHs have been confirmed in bulgeless galaxies. Identifying such a population could provide important insights to the BH seed…
The growing number of stellar-mass binary black hole mergers discovered by Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo are starting to constrain the binaries' origin and environment. However, we still lack sufficiently accurate modeling of binary…
Galaxies accrete their mass by means of both smooth accretion from the cosmic web, and the mergers of smaller entities. We wish to quantify the respective role of these two modes of accretion, which could determine the morphological types…
We present results of the clustering analysis between active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and galaxies at redshift 0.1-1.0 for investigating properties of galaxies associated with the AGNs, revealing the nature of fueling mechanism of…
Supermassive Black Holes (BHs) are known to efficiently grow through gas accretion, but even sustained and intense mass build-up through this mechanism struggles to explain the assembly of the most massive BHs observed in the local…
Advanced LIGO \& Advanced Virgo are detecting a large number of binary stellar origin black hole (BH) mergers. A promising channel for accelerated BH merger lies in active galactic nucleus (AGN) disks of gas around super-masssive black…
[Abriged] Supermassive black holes (SMBH) lurk in the nuclei of most massive galaxies, perhaps in all of them. The tight observed scaling relations between SMBH masses and structural properties of their host spheroids likely indicate that…
The mass of super massive black holes at the centre of galaxies is tightly correlated with the mass of the galaxy bulges which host them. This observed correlation implies a mechanism of joint growth, but the precise physical processes…
Observations and theoretical simulations suggest that a significant fraction of merger-triggered accretion onto supermassive black holes is highly obscured, particularly in late-stage galaxy mergers, when the black hole is expected to grow…
We present an analysis of the instantaneous supermassive black hole (SMBH) accretion rates in a collection of 1563 post-merger galaxies drawn from the IllustrisTNG simulation. Our sample consists of galaxies that have experienced a merger…
A direct consequence of hierarchical galaxy formation is the existence of dual supermassive black holes (SMBHs), which may be preferentially triggered as active galactic nuclei (AGN) during galaxy mergers. Despite decades of searching,…
Recent discoveries of massive black holes (MBHs) in dwarf galaxies suggest that they may have a more common presence than once thought. Systematic searches are revealing more candidates, but this process could be accelerated by predictions…
Primordial black holes may encode the conditions of the early universe, and may even constitute a significant fraction of cosmological dark matter. Their existence has yet to be established. However, black holes with masses below…
Which mechanism(s) are mainly driving nuclear activity in the centres of galaxies is a major unsettled question. In this study, we investigate the statistical relevance of galaxy mergers for fuelling gas onto the central few kpc of a…
Galaxy merger histories correlate strongly with stellar mass, largely regardless of morphology. Thus, at fixed stellar mass, spheroids and discs share similar assembly histories, both in terms of the frequency of mergers and the…
The hierarchical build-up of galactic bulges should lead to the build-up of present-day supermassive black holes by a mixture of gas accretion and merging of supermassive black holes. The tight relation between black hole mass and stellar…
We consider the merging of high-mass black-hole binaries of the Cyg X-1 type, in which the O-star companion becomes a neutron star following a supernova explosion. Our estimated rate of mergers, $\sim 2\times 10^{-5} yr^{-1}$ for the…
We discuss constraints on the assembly history of supermassive black holes from the observed remnant black holes in nearby galaxies and from the emission caused by accretion onto these black holes. We also summarize the results of a…
Two of the dominant channels to produce the black-hole binary mergers observed by LIGO and Virgo are believed to be the isolated evolution of stellar binaries in the field and dynamical formation in star clusters. Their relative efficiency…