Related papers: The sub-Eddington boundary for the quasar mass-lum…
One of the most pressing questions in cosmology is how the black holes (BHs) powering quasars at high redshift grow to supermassive scales within a billion years of the Big Bang. Here we show that sustained super-Eddington accretion can be…
Non-steady and eruptive phenomena in quasars are thought to be associated with the Eddington or super-Eddington luminous stage. Although there is no lack in hypotheses about the total duration of such a stage, the latter remains essentially…
Using a new large-scale (~ 0.75 Gpc)^3 hydrodynamic cosmological simulation we investigate the growth rate of supermassive black holes in the early universe (z > 4.75). Remarkably, we find a clear peak in the typical Eddington ratio at…
With the recent discoveries of massive and highly luminous quasars at high redshifts ($z\sim7$; e.g. Mortlock et al. 2011), the question of how black holes (BHs) grow in the early Universe has been cast in a new light. In order to grow BHs…
We present a simple semi-numerical model designed to explore black hole growth and galaxy evolution. This method builds on a previous model for black hole accretion that uses a semi-numerical galaxy formation model and universal Eddington…
Virial black-hole mass estimates are presented for 12698 quasars in the redshift interval 0.1<z<2.1, based on modelling of spectra from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) first data release . The black-hole masses of the SDSS quasars are…
Previous work on the quasar mass-luminosity plane indicates the possibility that quasars of the same central black hole mass might follow a common evolutionary track, independent of the properties of the host galaxy. We consider two simple…
Eddington ratio is a paramount parameter governing the accretion history and life cycles of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs). This short review presents a multi-faceted view of the importance of the Eddington ratio spanning varied AGN studies.…
The discovery of quasars and their supermassive black holes (SMBHs) over $10^{9} M_{\odot}$ merely hundreds of millions of years after the Big Bang generates tension with the idea of Eddington-limited accretion and pressures the community…
Super-Eddington accretion is a crucial phase in the growth of supermassive black holes. However, identifying super-Eddington accreting quasars observationally is challenging due to uncertain black-hole mass estimates and other…
A landmark of accretion processes in active galactic nuclei (AGN) is the continuum originating from a complex structure, i.e., an accretion disk and a corona around a supermassive black hole. Modelling the broad-band spectral energy…
The Eddington ratio ($\lambda_{\rm Edd}$) of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) is a fundamental parameter that governs the cosmic growth of SMBHs. Although gas mass accretion onto SMBHs is sustained when they are surrounded by large amounts…
Type 2 quasars are an important constituent of active galaxies, possibly representing the evolutionary precursors of traditionally studied type 1 quasars. We characterize the black hole mass ($M_{\rm BH}$) and Eddington ratio ($L_{\rm…
Accretion processes in quasars and active galactic nuclei are still poorly understood, especially as far as the connection between observed spectral properties and physical parameters is concerned. Quasars show an additional degree of…
We develop a broadband spectral model, agnsli}, to describe super-Eddington black hole accretion disc spectra. This is based on the slim disc emissivity, where radial advection keeps the surface luminosity at the local Eddington limit,…
We use 62,185 quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey DR5 sample and standard virial mass scaling laws based on the widths of H beta, Mg II, and C IV lines and adjacent continuum luminosities to explore the maximum mass of quasars as a…
We develop semi-empirical models of the supermassive black hole and active galactic nucleus (AGN) populations, which incorporate the black hole growth implied by the observed AGN luminosity function assuming a radiative efficiency \epsilon,…
We analyze the observed distribution of Eddington ratios as a function of supermassive black hole mass for a large sample of nearby galaxies drawn from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We demonstrate that there are two distinct regimes of…
Quasars (QSOs) emit an enormous amount of light as a result of the accretion of gas onto supermassive black holes (SMBHs). Thanks to their luminosity, the most distant known QSOs allow us to trace the growth of SMBHs deep into the epoch of…
Super-Eddington mass accretion has been suggested as an efficient mechanism to grow supermassive black holes (SMBHs). We investigate the imprint left by the radiative efficiency of the super-Eddington accretion process on the clustering of…