Related papers: Quasars and the Intergalactic Medium at Cosmic Daw…
The 21-cm signal from the cosmic reionization epoch can shed light on the history of heating of the primordial intergalactic medium (IGM) at z~30-10. It has been suggested that X-rays from the first accreting black holes could significantly…
Quasars signal a unique phase of galaxy evolution -- when massive spheroids are rapidly being assembled, forming stars and growing their central super-massive black holes. Measurements of the metal abundances around quasars provide unique…
Evolution in the measured rest frame ultraviolet spectral slope and ultraviolet to optical flux ratios indicate a rapid evolution in the dust obscuration of galaxies during the first 3 billion years of cosmic time (z>4). This evolution…
The history of the transition from a neutral intergalactic medium (IGM) to one that is almost fully ionized can reveal the character of cosmological ionizing sources. We study the evolution of the volume filling factor of HII and HeIII…
The most massive haloes at high redshift are expected, according to hierarchical cosmologies, to reside in the most biased density fields. If powerful active galactic nuclei (AGN) are expected to exist anywhere in the early Universe (z>5),…
We have used the IRAM Plateau de Bure mm interferometer and the UKIRT 1-5 um Imager Spectrometer to test the connection between the major phases of spheroid growth and nuclear accretion by mapping CO emission in nine submm-detected QSOs at…
In a popular scenario for the coevolution of massive black holes and galaxies, major mergers of gas-rich galaxies fuel vigorous star formation and obscured (type 2) quasar activity until energy feedback from the active galactic nucleus…
Overmassive black hole galaxies (OBGs) at redshifts $z \sim$ 10, or 450 Myr after the Big Bang, are one of the most puzzling discoveries by the James Webb Space Telescope to date because they formed by such early epochs and their black-hole…
The first star clusters and quasars resulted directly from the growth of linear density fluctuations in the early Universe. Since they emerged from a well-defined set of initial conditions, the interplay between observational data from the…
Several arguments suggest that quasars at z > 4 may be in the cores of future giant ellipticals, and forming at the very highest peaks of the primordial density field. A strong bias-driven primordial clustering is then expected in these…
Understanding how super-massive black holes form and grow in the early Universe has become a major challenge since the discovery of luminous quasars only 700 million years after the Big Bang. Simulations indicate an evolutionary sequence of…
The heavy elements near QSOs provide unique measures of the star formation and chemical evolution in young galactic nuclei or pre-galactic condensations. Studies of quasar abundances also naturally address a variety of questions regarding…
If broad absorption line (BAL) quasars represent a high covering fraction evolutionary state (even if this is not the sole factor governing the presence of BALs), it is expected that they should show an excess of mid-infrared radiation…
Although dust emission at cosmological distances has only been detected a little more than a decade ago, remarkable progress has been achieved since then in characterizing the far-infrared emission of high-redshift systems. The mere fact…
Soft X-ray photoelectric absorption of high-z quasars has been known for two decades, but has no unambiguous astro-physical context. We construct the largest sample to date of 58 high redshift quasars (z > 0.45) selected from the XMM-Newton…
Luminous quasars at $z > 6$ are key probes of early supermassive black hole (SMBH) growth, massive galaxy evolution, and intergalactic medium properties during cosmic reionization. However, their discovery is very challenging due to their…
Modeling the evolution of the number density distribution of quasars through the Quasar Luminosity Function (QLF) is critical to improve our understanding of the connection between black holes, galaxies and their halos. Here we present a…
When, and how, did the first galaxies and supermassive black holes (SMBH) form, and how did they reionization the Universe? First galaxy formation and cosmic reionization are among the last frontiers in studies of cosmic structure…
We investigate the 21 cm absorption lines produced by non-linear structures during the early stage of reionization, i.e. the starless minihalos and the dwarf galaxies. After a detailed modelling of their properties, with particular…
Quasars, the brightly glowing disks of material that can form around the super-massive black holes at the centres of large galaxies, are amongst the most luminous astronomical objects known and so can be seen at great distances. The most…