Related papers: Quasar Mass Functions Across Cosmic Time
Dark matter has been introduced to explain mass deficits noted at different astronomical scales, in galaxies, groups of galaxies, clusters, superclusters and even across the full horizon. Dark matter makes itself felt only through its…
Active galaxies contain a supermassive black hole at their center, which grows by accreting matter from the surrounding galaxy. The accretion process in the central ~10 parsecs has not been directly resolved in previous observations, due to…
Estimating the black hole mass at the center of galaxies is a fundamental step not only for understanding the physics of accretion, but also for the cosmological evolution of galaxies. Recently a new method, based solely on X-ray data, was…
In this book chapter, we will briefly review the current empirical understanding of the relation between accretion state and and outflows in accreting stellar mass black holes. The focus will be on the empirical connections between X-ray…
This thesis aims to review the cosmological mass function problem, both from the theoretical and the observational point of view, and to present a new mass function theory, based on realistic approximations for the dynamics of gravitational…
Using a set of zoomed-in cosmological simulations of high-redshift progenitors of massive galaxies, we isolate and trace the history of gas that is accreted by central supermassive black holes. We determine the origins of the accreted gas,…
Tidal disruption events provide a unique probe of quiescent black holes in the nuclei of distant galaxies. The next generation of synoptic surveys will yield a large sample of flares from the tidal disruption of stars by massive black holes…
According to a currently popular paradigm, nuclear activity in quasars is sustained via accretion of material onto super-massive black holes located at the quasar nuclei. A useful tracer of the gravitational field in the vicinity of such…
In the standard paradigm, astrophysical black holes can be described solely by their mass and angular momentum - commonly referred to as `spin' - resulting from the process of their birth and subsequent growth via accretion. Whilst the mass…
We compare the evolution with cosmic time of the star-formation rate per comoving volume in galaxies and of the volume emissivity by Active Galactic Nuclei, as a clue to understand the relationship between black hole accretion and the…
We present black hole mass measurements from kinematic modeling of high-spatial resolution integral field spectroscopy of the inner regions of 9 nearby (ultra-)luminous infrared galaxies in a variety of merger stages. These observations…
I briefly outline recent theoretical developments on the formation of the first massive black holes (MBHs) that may grow into the population of MBHs powering quasars and inhabiting galactic centers today. I also touch upon possible…
In this review, I have tried to focus on the development of the field, from the first speculations to the current lines of research. According to Einstein's theory of general relativity, black holes are relatively simple objects and…
The determination of supermassive black hole (SMBH) masses is the key to understanding the host galaxy build-up and the SMBH mass assembly histories. The SMBH masses of non-local quasars are frequently estimated via the single-epoch virial…
Black holes are perhaps the most strange and fascinating objects known to exist in the universe. Our understanding of space and time is pushed to its limits by the extreme conditions found in these objects. They can be used as natural…
High-frequency quasiperiodic oscillations of the X-ray flux comming from black-hole binaries have the potential to provide precise estimates of the mass and the spin of the central black hole, if an adequate model for them was available.…
Classical black holes are solutions of the field equations of General Relativity. Many astronomical observations suggest that black holes really exist in nature. However, an unambiguous proof for their existence is still lacking. Neither…
We report the first results of a program to measure accurate stellar velocity dispersions in the bulges of the host galaxies of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) for which accurate black hole (BH) masses have been determined via reverberation…
We calculate the black hole mass distribution function that follows from the random emission of quanta by Hawking radiation and with this function we calculate the black hole mass fluctuation. From a complete different perspective we regard…
The AGN Black Hole Mass Database is a compilation of all published spectroscopic reverberation-mapping studies of active galaxies. We have created a public web interface, where users may get the most up-to-date black hole masses from…