Related papers: Quasar Mass Functions Across Cosmic Time
Obscured or narrow-line active galaxies offer an unobstructed view of the quasar environment in the presence of a luminous and vigorously accreting black hole. We exploit the large new sample of optically selected luminous narrow-line…
Recent work using virial mass estimates and the quasar mass-luminosity plane has yielded several new puzzles regarding quasar accretion, including a sub-Eddington boundary on most quasar accretion, near-independence of the accretion rate…
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…
Recently, we showed that the possibility of an interstellar mission to the closest black hole, while highly speculative and extremely challenging, is not completely unrealistic within the next few decades. Since such a mission might last…
We discuss the implications of new relations between black holes' masses, X-ray luminosities and radio luminosities, as well as the properties of the next generation of radio telescopes, for the goal of finding isolated accreting black…
We review the current state of dynamical modeling for galaxies in terms of being able to measure both the central black hole mass and stellar orbital structure. Both of these must be known adequately to measure either property. The current…
Microquasars are compact objects (stellar-mass black holes and neutron stars) that mimic, on a smaller scale, many of the phenomena seen in quasars. Their discovery provided new insights into the physics of relativistic jets observed…
The evolution of the mass of a black hole embedded in a universe filled with dark energy and cold dark matter is calculated in a closed form within a test fluid model in a Schwarzschild metric, taking into account the cosmological evolution…
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…
In this contributed paper I review our current knowledge of the local Black Hole (BH) scaling relations, and their impact on the determination of the local BH mass function. I particularly emphasize the remaining systematic uncertainties…
Dwarf galaxies and globular clusters may contain intermediate mass black holes ($10^{3}$ to $10^{5}$ solar masses) in their cores. Estimates of ~$10^{3}$ neutron stars in the central parsec of the Galaxy and similar numbers in small…
We examine the issue of magnetic charge quantization in the presence of black holes. It is pointed out that quantization of magnetic charge can lead to the mass quantization for magnetically charged black holes. We also discuss some…
In this review the correlations between host galaxy properties and black-hole mass determined from nearby quiescent galaxies are briefly discussed, before proceeding to investigate their application to active galactic nuclei (AGN). The…
We use semi-analytic modeling on top of the Millennium simulation to study the joint formation of galaxies and their embedded supermassive black holes. Our goal is to test scenarios in which black hole accretion and quasar activity are…
Only a small fraction of local galaxies harbor an accreting black hole, classified as an active galactic nucleus (AGN). However, many stellar systems are plausibly expected to host black holes, from globular clusters to nuclear star…
Recent X-ray timing and spectral observations of black hole binaries in outburst have redefined methods for investigating the properties of Galactic black holes and the physics of accretion flows. High-frequency X-ray QPOs in 5 systems…
Pulsar timing is a promising technique for detecting low frequency sources of gravitational waves. Historically the focus has been on the detection of diffuse stochastic backgrounds, such as those formed from the superposition of weak…
Black holes are superb sources of gravitational wave signals, for example when they are born in stellar collapse. We explore the subtleties that may emerge if mass accretion events increase significantly the mass of the black hole during…
I review our current understanding of the structures and ages of the host galaxies of quasars, and the masses of their central black holes. At low redshift, due largely to the impact of the Hubble Space Telescope, there is now compelling…
Supermassive black holes underwent periods of exponential growth during which we seem them as quasars in the distant Universe. The summed emission from these quasars generates the cosmic X-ray background, the spectrum of which has been used…