Related papers: Massive Black Holes Across Cosmic Time
I present mass functions of actively accreting black holes detected in different quasar surveys which in concert cover a wide range of cosmic history. I briefly address what we learn from these mass functions. I summarize the motivation for…
Black holes provide a window into the microscopic structure of spacetime in quantum gravity. Recently the quantum information contained in Hawking radiation has been calculated, verifying a key aspect of the consistency of black hole…
I review our current understanding of massive black hole (MBH) formation and evolution along the cosmic history. After a brief introductory overview of the relevance of MBHs in the hierarchical structure formation paradigm, I discuss the…
The next generation of electromagnetic and gravitational wave observatories will open unprecedented windows to the birth of the first supermassive black holes. This has the potential to reveal their origin and growth in the first billion…
We review the likely population, observational properties, and broad implications of stellar-mass black holes and ultraluminous x-ray sources. We focus on the clear empirical rules connecting accretion and outflow that have been established…
This Astro-2020 White Paper deals with what we might learn from future gravitational wave observations about the early universe phase transitions and their energy scales, primordial black holes, Hubble parameter, dark matter and dark…
Aspects of primordial black holes, i.e. black holes formed in the early Universe, are reviewed. Special emphasis is put on their formation, their role as dark matter candidates and their manifold signatures, particularly through…
There is a lot of current astrophysical evidence and interest in intermediate mass black holes, ranging from a few hundred to several thousand solar masses. The active galaxy M82 and the globular cluster in M31, for example, are known to…
Black holes in binary star systems are vital for understanding the process of pr oducing gravitational wave sources, understanding how supernovae work, and for p roviding fossil evidence for the high mass stars from earlier in the Universe.…
The formation and growth of black holes can strongly influence the distribution of dark matter around them. I discuss here the different types of dark matter overdensities around black holes, including dark matter cusps, spikes, mounds,…
Black holes, an extreme consequence of the mathematics of General Relativity, have long been suspected of being the prime movers of quasars, which emit more energy than any other objects in the Universe. Recent evidence indicates that…
In a recent paper we pointed out that supermassive black holes, with masses ranging from $10^5$ to $10^{10} M_\odot$ form naturally at cosmic dawn if the dark matter is QCD axions or axion-like particles with mass $m > 10^{-16}\,…
The spectrum of the hard X-ray background records the history of accretion processes integrated over the cosmic time. Several observational and theoretical evidences indicate that a significant fraction of the energy density is obscured by…
In the last decades, luminous accreting super-massive black holes have been discovered within the first Gyr after the Big Bang, but their origin is still an unsolved mystery. We discuss our state-of-the-art theoretical knowledge of their…
Many galaxies contain supermassive black holes (SMBHs), whose formation and history raise many puzzles. Pulsar timing arrays have recently discovered a low-frequency cosmological "hum" of gravitational waves that may be emitted by SMBH…
A brief review of the recent astronomical data, indicating that the universe is abundantly populated by heavy black holes (BH), is presented. Conventional astrophysics and cosmology cannot explain such a high population of BHs. A mechanism…
The recent detections of gravitational waves from binary systems of black holes are in remarkable agreement with the predictions of General Relativity. In this pedagogical mini-review, I will go through the physics of the different phases…
The most massive black holes, lurking at the centers of large galaxies, must have formed less than a billion years after the big bang, as they are visible today in the form of bright quasars at redshift larger than six. Their early…
Electromagnetic observations over the last 15 years have yielded a growing appreciation for the importance of supermassive black holes (SMBH) to the evolution of galaxies, and for the intricacies of dynamical interactions in our own…
Some issues relevant for the formation of supermassive black holes are discused and estimates of the event rates for the emission of gravitational waves by coalescing supermassive black hole binaries are given. The models take into account…