Related papers: Illuminating black hole subsystems in young star c…
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…
We study the growth of massive black holes (BH) in galaxies using smoothed particle hydrodynamic simulations of major galaxy mergers with new implementations of BH accretion and feedback. The effect of BH accretion on gas in its host galaxy…
The formation environments of merging binary black holes remain uncertain. While hierarchical assembly in dense stellar clusters has been widely explored as an explanation for black holes exceeding the stellar-mass limit, growth through gas…
Supermassive Black Holes grow at the center of galaxies in consonance with them. In this review we discuss the mass feeding mechanisms that lead to this growth in Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), focusing on constraints derived from…
The origin of the supermassive black holes that power the most distant quasars observed is largely unknown. One hypothesis is that they grew rapidly from intermediate-mass seeds (~100 M_sun) left by the first stars. However, some previous…
The co-evolution of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) and their host galaxies remains one of the central open questions in cosmology, rooted in the coupling between accretion, feedback, and the multi-scale physics that links the event…
Dwarf galaxies are ideal laboratories to probe the interplay between galaxy formation and the growth of black holes (BHs) in the early Universe. Mounting observational evidence reveals the presence of BHs in low-mass galaxies across cosmic…
We evolve for the first time in full general relativity a small, collisional N-body black hole cluster of arbitrary total mass M. The bound cluster is initially compact (radius R/M~10), stable, and consists of 25 equal-mass, nonspinning…
Supermassive black holes (with $\mathrm{M_{BH} \sim 10^9 M_{\odot}}$) are observed in the first Gyr of the Universe, and their host galaxies are found to contain unexpectedly large amounts of dust and metals. In light of the two empirical…
Short-lived intermittent phases of super-critical (super-Eddington) growth, coupled with star formation via positive feedback, may account for early growth of massive black holes (MBH) and coevolution with their host spheroids. We estimate…
The large majority of the accreting supermassive black holes in the Universe are obscured by large columns of gas and dust. The location and evolution of this obscuring material have been the subject of intense research in the past decades,…
Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) can grow through both accretion and mergers. It is still unclear how SMBHs evolve under these two channels from high redshifts to the SMBH population we observe in the local universe. Observations can…
A newly formed black hole may be directly identified if late-time accretion of material from the base of the ejected envelope generates a luminosity that is observable in the tail of the supernova light curve. In this work we estimate the…
Neutron stars inspiralling into a stellar envelope can accrete at rates vastly exceeding the Eddington limit if the flow develops pressures high enough to allow neutrinos to radiate the released gravitational energy. It has been suggested…
Primordial black holes (PBH) accretion in the late Universe can lead to significant mass growth. A larger mass further accelerates the accretion radiation output for PBHs with initial masses greater than one solar mass, potentially leading…
We use three-dimensional high-resolution adaptive-mesh-refinement simulations to investigate if mechanical feedback from active galactic nucleus jets can halt a massive cooling flow in a galaxy cluster and give rise to a self-regulated…
The total feedback energy injected into hot gas in galaxy clusters by central black holes can be estimated by comparing the potential energy of observed cluster gas profiles with the potential energy of non-radiating, feedback-free hot gas…
To advance our understanding of the fuelling and feedback processes which power the Universe's most massive black holes, we require a significant increase in our knowledge of the molecular gas which exists in their immediate surroundings.…
In this review we discuss the population of stellar-mass black holes in our galaxy and beyond, which are the extreme endpoints of massive star evolution. In particular we focus on how we can attempt to balance the available accretion energy…