Related papers: Multi-flavour SMBH seeding and evolution in cosmol…
We study for the first time the environment of massive black hole (BH) seeds (~10^4-5 Msun) formed via the direct collapse of pristine gas clouds in massive haloes (>10^7 Msun) at z>6. Our model is based on the evolution of dark matter…
Recent observations of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at high redshifts pose challenges to standard seeding mechanisms. Among competing models, the collapse of self-interacting dark matter (SIDM) halos provide a plausible explanation for…
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…
Recent observational and theoretical studies have suggested that supermassive black holes (SMBHs) grow mostly through non-merger (`secular') processes. Since galaxy mergers lead to dynamical bulge growth, the only way to observationally…
Numerous observations have shown that almost all galaxies in our Universe host supermassive black holes (SMBHs), but there is still much debate about their formation and evolutionary processes. Recently, gravitational waves (GWs) have been…
We present a new semi-analytical model for the evolution of galaxies and supermassive black holes (SMBHs) that is based on the extended Press-Schechter formalism and phenomenological modelling of star formation. The model yields BH…
JWST has revealed an abundant population of compact, low-metallicity "Little Red Dots" (LRDs) at high redshift, challenging conventional scenarios in which supermassive black holes (SMBHs) grow from stellar-mass seeds. We consider a…
The origin of the first supermassive black holes (SMBHs) observed at redshifts $z\geq 9$ remains one of the most challenging open questions in astrophysics. Their rapid emergence suggests that massive ``heavy seeds'' must have formed early,…
We investigate the formation of the first massive black holes in high redshift galaxies, with the goal of providing insights to which galaxies do or do not host massive black holes. We adopt a novel approach to forming seed black holes in…
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…
JWST has recently revealed a large population of accreting black holes (BHs) in the early Universe. Even after accounting for possible systematic biases, the high-z $M_*-M_{\rm \rm bh}$ relation derived from these objects by Pacucci et al.…
Intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs), with masses in the range $100-10^{6}$ M$_{\odot}$, are the link between stellar-mass BHs and supermassive BHs (SMBHs). They are thought to be the seeds from which SMBHs grow, which would explain the…
Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are found in most galactic nuclei. A significant fraction of these nuclei also contain a nuclear stellar cluster (NSC) surrounding the SMBH. In this paper, we consider the idea that the NSC forms first, from…
Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are thought to originate from early Universe seed black holes of mass $M_\mathrm{BH} \sim 10^2$-10$^5$ M$_{\odot}$ and grown through cosmic time. Such seeds could be powering the active galactic nuclei (AGN)…
Using few-body simulations, we investigate the evolution of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in galaxies ($M_{\star}=10^{10}-10^{12}{\rm M}_{\odot}$ at $z=0$) at $0<z<4$. Following galaxy merger trees from the Millennium simulation, we…
The origins and mergers of supermassive black holes (BHs) remain a mystery. We describe a scenario from a novel multi-physics simulation featuring rapid ($\lesssim 1\,$Myr) hyper-Eddington gas capture by a $\sim 1000\,{\rm M}_{\odot}$…
Recent Pulsar Timing Arrays (PTAs) results provided strong evidence for a stochastic gravitational wave background (sGWB), consistent with a population of merging massive black holes (MBHs) at $z<1$. Meanwhile, JWST observations at $z>5$…
Supermassive black hole (SMBH) growth plausibly occurs via runaway astrophysical black hole mergers in nuclear star clusters that form intermediate mass black hole seeds at high redshifts. Such a model yields an order-of-magnitude higher…
We model for the first time the complete orbital evolution of a pair of Supermassive Black Holes (SMBHs) in a 1:10 galaxy merger of two disk dominated gas-rich galaxies, from the stage prior to the formation of the binary up to the onset of…
While supermassive black holes (SMBHs) play an important role in galaxy and cluster evolution, at present they can only be included in large-scale cosmological simulation via subgrid techniques. However, these subgrid models have not been…