Related papers: Black hole evolution: I. Supernova-regulated black…
I present a new method to unveil the history of cosmic accretion and the build-up of Supermassive Black Holes (SMBH) in the nuclei of galaxies, based on observations of the evolving radio and (hard) X-ray luminosity functions of AGN. The…
Black holes (BHs) are believed to be a key ingredient of galaxy formation. However, the galaxy-BH interplay is challenging to study due to the large dynamical range and complex physics involved. As a consequence, hydrodynamical cosmological…
Discovery of high-redshift (z > 6) supermassive black holes (BHs) may indicate that the rapid (or super-Eddington) gas accretion has aided their quick growth. Here, we study such rapid accretion of the primordial gas on to intermediate-mass…
We explore the evolution of supermassive black holes (SMBH) centered in a circumnuclear disk (CND) as a function of the mass supply from the host galaxy and considering different star formation laws, which may give rise to a self-regulation…
(Abridged) We use high resolution cosmological N-body simulations to study the growth of intermediate to supermassive black holes from redshift 49 to zero. We track the growth of black holes from the seeds of population III stars to black…
Theoretical models predict that a population of Intermediate Mass Black Holes (IMBHs) of mass $M_\bullet \approx 10^{4-5} \, \mathrm{M_{\odot}}$ might form at high ($z > 10$) redshift by different processes. Such objects would represent the…
The growth of black holes (BHs) in disk galaxies lacking classical bulges, which implies an absence of significant mergers, appears to be driven by secular processes. Short bars of sub-kiloparsec radius have been hypothesized to be an…
It is well established that cosmic supermassive black hole (SMBH) growth peaks at $z\approx1.5-2$, followed by a strong decline of $\approx1-1.5\,\rm dex$ toward the present day, with the comoving number density of higher-luminosity active…
In this paper we discuss the evolution of gravitationally unstable pre-galactic discs that result from the collapse of haloes at high redshift $z \approx 10$ or so, which have not yet been enriched by metals. In cases where molecular…
We study the distribution of accretion rates onto supermassive black holes (SMBH) in AGNs of the local Universe ($z<0.15$) based on near-infrared and hard X-ray surveys (2MASS and Swift/BAT). Using sufficiently accurate black hole 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…
Luminous quasars powered by accreting supermassive black holes (SMBHs) have been found in the early Universe at $z \gtrsim 7.5$, which set a strong constraint on both the seed black hole mass and the rapid growth of the SMBHs. In this work,…
Understanding the formation and growth of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at high redshift represents a major challenge for theoretical models. In this work we investigate the early evolution of the first SMBHs by constraining their…
We discuss a simple model for the growth of supermassive black holes (BHs) at the center of spheroidal stellar systems. In particular, we assess the hypotheses that (1) star formation in spheroids and BH fueling are proportional to one…
Quasars powered by massive black holes (BHs) with mass estimates above a billion solar masses have been identified at redshift 6 and beyond. The existence of such BHs requires almost continuous growth at the Eddington limit for their whole…
Recent observations support the idea that nuclear black holes grew by gas accretion while shining as luminous quasars at high redshift, and they establish a relation of the black hole mass with the host galaxy's spheroidal stellar system.…
Understanding the processes that drive galaxy formation and shape the observed properties of galaxies is one of the most interesting and challenging frontier problems of modern astrophysics. We now know that the evolution of galaxies is…
We investigate the origin of the scatter in the supermassive black hole (BH) masses for galaxies in the L* regime, using the ARTEMIS and EAGLE simulations. By classifying galaxies based on their central BH / galaxy stellar masses ratios, we…
We report results of a project investigating the growth of super-massive black holes (BHs) by disk accretion. We find that the BH mass growth is quick enough to account for the inferred masses in the highest-redshift quasars, and the growth…
With detections of quasars powered by increasingly massive black holes (BHs) at increasingly early times in cosmic history over the past decade, there has been correspondingly rapid progress made on the theory of early BH formation and…