Related papers: Nuclear Black Hole Formation in Clumpy Galaxies at…
Repeated mergers of stellar-mass black holes (BHs) in dense star clusters can produce intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs). In particular, nuclear star clusters at the centers of galaxies have deep enough potential wells to retain most of…
Recent work has demonstrated that there is a tight correlation between the mass of a black hole and the velocity dispersion of the bulge of its host galaxy. We show that the model of Kauffmann & Haehnelt, in which bulges and supermassive…
We present HST images for nine megamaser disk galaxies with the primary goal of studying photometric BH-galaxy scaling relations. The megamaser disks provide the highest-precision extragalactic BH mass measurements, while our…
We review the main physical processes that lead to the formation of stellar binary black holes (BBHs) and to their merger. BBHs can form from the isolated evolution of massive binary stars. The physics of core-collapse supernovae and the…
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…
Aims. In this paper we continue our study of density cusps that may contain central black holes. Methods. We recall our attempts to use distribution functions with a memory of self-similar relaxation, but mostly they apply only in…
We study the dynamics of massive black hole pairs in clumpy gaseous circumnuclear disks. We track the orbital decay of the light, secondary black hole $M_{\bullet2}$ orbiting around the more massive primary at the center of the disk, using…
We investigate a model in which galactic nuclei form via the coalescence of pre-existing stellar systems containing supermassive black holes. Merger simulations are carried out using N-body algorithms that can follow the formation and decay…
The hierarchical galaxy formation picture suggests that super massive black holes (MBHs) observed in galactic nuclei today have grown from coalescence of massive black hole binaries (MBHB) after galaxy merging. Once the components of a MBHB…
We present a model for the formation of massive black holes ($\sim 1000 \msun$) due to stellar-dynamical processes in the first stellar clusters formed at early cosmic times ($z\sim10-20$). The high redshift black hole seeds form as a…
We explore the evolution of stellar mass black hole binaries (BHBs) which are formed in the self-gravitating disks of active galactic nuclei (AGN). Hardening due to three-body scattering and gaseous drag are effective mechanisms that reduce…
In this paper, we study the formation and dynamical evolution of black hole-black hole (BH-BH) binaries in young star clusters (YSCs), by means of N-body simulations. The simulations include metallicity-dependent recipes for stellar…
Significant historic cosmic evolution for the formation rate of stellar black holes is inferred from current theoretical models of the evolution of massive stars, the multiple observations of compact stellar remnants in the near and distant…
Supermassive black holes appear to be uniquely associated with galactic bulges. The mean ratio of black hole mass to bulge mass was until recently very uncertain, with ground based, stellar kinematical data giving a value roughly an order…
The stellar mass in disk galaxies scales approximately with the fourth power of the rotation velocity, and the masses of the central black holes in galactic nuclei scale approximately with the fourth power of the bulge velocity dispersion.…
Intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) are believed to be the missing link between the supermassive black holes (BHs) found at the centers of massive galaxies and BHs formed through stellar core collapse. One of the proposed mechanisms for…
We present theoretical models of black hole (BH) populations in young stellar environments, such as starbursts and young star clusters. Using a population synthesis approach we compute the formation rates and characteristic properties of…
We study the long-term evolution of two or more stellar black holes (BHs) on initially separated but unstable circular orbits around a supermassive BH (SMBH). Such a close-packed orbital configuration can naturally arise from BH migrations…
This is the second paper in a series aimed at modeling the black hole (BH) mass function, from the stellar to the (super)massive regime. In the present work we focus on (super)massive BHs and provide an ab-initio computation of their mass…
The nucleus of almost all massive galaxies contains a supermassive black hole (BH). The feedback from the accretion of these BHs is often considered to have crucial roles in establishing the quiescence of massive galaxies, although some…