Related papers: The formation and evolution of massive black hole …
Black holes across a broad range of masses play a key role in the evolution of galaxies. The initial seeds of black holes formed at $z \sim 30$ and grew over cosmic time by gas accretion and mergers. Using observational data for quasars and…
Supermassive black holes are nowadays believed to reside in most local galaxies. Accretion of gas and black hole mergers play a fundamental role in determining the two parameters defining a black hole: mass and spin. I briefly review here…
While supermassive black holes (BHs) are widely observed in the nearby and distant universe, their origin remains debated with two viable formation scenarios with light and heavy seeds. In the light seeding model, the first BHs form from…
The discovery of supermassive black holes with masses $\gtrsim 10^9 M_\odot$ at redshifts $z\gtrsim 10$ challenges conventional formation scenarios based on baryonic accretion and mergers within the first few hundred million years. We…
In this paper, we compare the observationally derived black hole mass function (BHMF) of luminous broad-line quasars (BLQSOs) at 1<z<4.5 drawn from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) presented in Kelly et al. (2010), with models of merger…
We explore the cosmic evolution of massive black hole (MBH) seeds forming within 'quasistars' (QSs), accreting black holes embedded within massive hydrostatic gaseous envelopes. These structures could form if the infall of gas into the…
We investigate the physical conditions for the growth of intermediate mass seed black holes assumed to have formed from remnants of the first generation of massive stars. We follow the collapse of high-sigma halos with Tvir > 1e4 K using…
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…
Black holes exceeding a billion solar masses have been detected at redshifts greater than six. The rapid formation of these objects may suggest a massive early seed or a period of growth faster than Eddington. Here we suggest a new…
Detecting the seed black holes from which quasars formed is extremely challenging; however, those seeds that did not grow into supermassive should be found as intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) of 100-10$^5$ M$_{\odot}$ in local dwarf…
We show the Eddington ratio distributions of supermassive black holes at a wide redshift range (0 < z < 8) obtained with a semi-analytic model of galaxy formation. The distribution is broadly consistent with observational estimates at low…
Observations of high-redshift quasars at z>6 imply that supermassive black holes (SMBHs) with masses over a billion solar masses were in place less than 1 Gyr after the Big Bang. If these SMBHs assembled from "seed" BHs left behind by the…
We consider black hole - galaxy coevolution using simple analytic arguments. We focus on the fact that several supermassive black holes are known with masses significantly larger than suggested by the $M - {\sigma}$ relation, sometimes also…
Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are common in local galactic nuclei, and SMBHs as massive as several billion solar masses already exist at redshift z=6. These earliest SMBHs may grow by the combination of radiation-pressure-limited…
We consider a scenario where supermassive black holes form through direct accumulation of gas at the centre of proto-galaxies. In the first stage, the accumulated gas forms a super-massive star whose core collapses when the nuclear fuel is…
We make black hole (BH) merger trees from Millennium and Millennium-II simulations to find under what conditions 10^9Msun SMBH can form by redshift z=7. In order to exploit both: large box size in the Millennium simulation; and large mass…
Possible formation scenarios of supermassive black holes in the early universe include rapid growth from less massive seed black holes (BHs) via super-Eddington accretion or runaway mergers, yet both of these scenarios would require seed…
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has revealed a puzzling population of massive black holes in the first billion years, many of which are over-massive compared to their hosts (obese black holes), and reside in metal-poor hosts, posing a…
Observations of quasars at $\rm z> 6$ report the existence of a billion solar mass black holes. Comprehending their formation in such a short time scale is a matter of ongoing research. One of the most promising scenarios to assemble…
We explore the observational implications of a model in which primordial black holes (PBHs) with a broad birth mass function ranging in mass from a fraction of a solar mass to $\sim$10$^6$ M$_{\odot}$, consistent with current observational…