Related papers: The Observational Signatures of Supermassive Black…
The origin and properties of black hole seeds that grow to produce the detected population of supermassive black holes are unconstrained at present. Despite the existence of several potentially feasible channels for the production of…
The formation, merging, and accretion history of massive black holes along the hierarchical build--up of cosmic structures leaves a unique imprint on the background of gravitational waves at mHz frequencies. We study here, by means of…
We explore the expected X-ray (0.5-2keV) signatures from super massive black holes (SMBHs) at high redshifts ($z\sim5-12$) assuming various models for their seeding mechanism and evolution. The seeding models are approximated through…
We study the gravitational wave background produced from the formation and assembly of supermassive black holes within the cosmological paradigm of hierarchical structure formation. In particular, we focus on a supermassive black hole…
The first "seeds" of supermassive black holes (BHs) continue to be an outstanding puzzle, and it is currently unclear whether the imprints of early seed formation survive today. Here we examine the signatures of seeding in the local…
All the physical processes involved in the formation, merging, and accretion history of massive black holes along the hierarchical build--up of cosmic structures are likely to leave an imprint on the gravitational waves detectable by future…
The massive black holes we observe in galaxies today are the natural end-product of a complex evolutionary path, in which black holes seeded in proto-galaxies at high redshift grow through cosmic history via a sequence of mergers and…
Tracking the evolution of high redshift seed black hole masses to late times, we examine the observable signatures today. These massive initial black hole seeds form at extremely high redshifts from the direct collapse of pre-galactic gas…
LISA should detect gravitational waves from tens to hundreds of systems containing black holes with mass in the range from 10 thousand to 10 million solar masses. Black holes in this mass range are not well constrained by current…
We study how statistical properties of supermassive black holes depend on the frequency and conditions for massive seed formation in cosmological simulations of structure formation. We develop a novel method to recalculate detailed growth…
The advent of new and near-future observatories probing the earliest epochs of the Universe has opened the opportunity to investigate the formation and growth of the first massive black holes (MBHs). Additionally, the use of high resolution…
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…
The process whereby the supermassive black holes populating the centers of galaxies have been assembled remains to be established, with the relative importance of seeds provided by collapsed Population-III stars, black holes formed in…
Using the semi-analytic model Serotina, we investigate the cosmic spin evolution of supermassive black holes incorporating recent results from general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics simulations of spin-down from relativistic jets. We…
The assembly of massive black holes in the early universe remains a poorly constrained open question in astrophysics. The merger and accretion of light seeds (remnants of Population III stars with mass below $\sim 1000M_{\odot}$) or heavy…
Models aiming to explain the formation of massive black hole seeds, and in particular the direct collapse scenario, face substantial difficulties. These are rooted in rather ad hoc and fine-tuned initial conditions, such as the simultaneous…
The correlations between the mass of supermassive black holes and properties of their host galaxies are investigated through cosmological simulations. Black holes grow from seeds of 100 solar masses inserted into density peaks present in…
Based on a high resolution cosmological n-body simulation, we track the hierarchical growth of black holes in galaxy clusters from z=20 to z=0. We present a census of black holes as function of redshift and will determine their mass…
The existence of black holes in the intermediate mass interval between one hundred and ten thousand solar masses, filling the gap between the stellar and the supermassive black holes is a key prediction to explain the origin of luminous…
Supermassive black holes are probably present in the centre of the majority of the galaxies. There is a consensus that these exotic objects are formed by the growth of seeds either by accreting mass from a circumnuclear disk and/or by…