Related papers: How Big Can a Black Hole Grow?
Growth of massive black holes (MBHs) in galactic centers comes mainly from gas accretion during their QSO/AGN phases. In this paper we apply an extended Soltan argument, connecting the local MBH mass function with the time-integral of the…
The discovery of high redshift quasars represents a challenge to the origin of supermassive black holes. Here, two evolutionary scenarios are considered. The first one concerns massive black holes in the local universe, which in a large…
We investigate the accretion-driven growth of supermassive black holes in the low-redshift Universe using 23,000 ``Type 2'' AGN and the complete sample of 123,000 galaxies in the SDSS from which they were drawn. We use the stellar velocity…
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…
In accordance with current models of the accelerating Universe as a spacetime with a positive cosmological constant, new results about a cosmological upper bound for the area of stable marginally outer trapped surfaces are found taking into…
We present a well-tested, theoretically supported empirical relation that helps decipher the origins, growth, and properties of SMBHs (supermassive black holes). Based on theoretical considerations and analysis of mass (MBH) versus age (t)…
We consider the distribution of local supermassive black hole Eddington ratios and accretion rates, accounting for the dependence of radiative efficiency and bolometric corrections on the accretion rate. We find that black hole mass growth,…
We show that dark stars, which are dark-matter-powered stars in the early universe, can grow by accretion to masses in the range $\mathscr{O}\left ({10}^4\right )-\mathscr{O}\left ({10}^7\right)\,{M_\odot}$ before the general-relativistic…
(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…
Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 galaxies (NLS1s) and Narrow-Line quasars (NLQs) seem to amount to ~ 10-30 % of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) in the local universe. Together with their average accretion rate, we argue that the black hole (BH) growth…
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…
We compare the performance of the popular Bondi-Hoyle-Lyttleton (BHL) accretion scheme with a simple mass-flux scheme applied to stellar-mass black holes (BHs) across six levels of increasing spatial resolution. Simulating the formation of…
We describe a mechanism by which supermassive black holes can form directly in the nuclei of protogalaxies, without the need for seed black holes left over from early star formation. Self-gravitating gas in dark matter halos can lose…
A supermassive black hole SgrA* with the mass ~4x10^6 Msun resides at the centre of our galaxy. Building up such a massive black hole within the ~10^10 year lifetime of our galaxy would require a mean accretion rate of ~4x10^-4 Msun/yr. At…
Supermassive Black Holes are the most entropic objects found in the universe. The Holographic Bound (HB) to the entropy is used to constrain their formation time with initial masses $\sim{10}^{6-8}M_{\odot}$, as inferred from observations.…
Beyond all reasonable doubt, black holes are commonly found in the nuclei of most normal galaxies. In recent years, dynamical measurements of hole masses have transformed the study of their functioning and evolution. In particular, relating…
If massive black holes constitute the dark matter in the halo surrounding the Milky Way, the existence of low mass globular clusters in the halo suggests an upper limit to their mass, $M_{_{BH}}$. We use a combination of the impulse…
The spin of intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) growing through repeated black hole mergers in stellar clusters statistically asymptotes to zero. Putative observations of IMBHs with dimensionless spin parameter $\chi\gtrsim 0.6$ would…
The effect of AGN wind feedback on the accretion rate and mass evolution of supermassive black holes (SMBH) is considered. It is shown, under reasonable assumptions, that the rate at which gas can be supplied to a SMBH at the center of a…
The growth of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) remains a central problem in astrophysics, with current observations providing only limited constraints on the underlying mechanisms. One possible growth channel is stellar accretion via the…