Related papers: Massive black holes in galactic nuclei: Theory and…
Massive black holes (MBHs) inhabit galaxy centers, power luminous quasars and Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) and shape their cosmic environment with the energy they produce. The origins of MBHs remain a mystery and the recent detection by…
Massive black holes (MBHs), with masses in the range 10^3-10^8 Msolar, which merge with a companion black hole of similar mass are expected to be the most powerful source of gravitational radiation in the frequency range probed by LISA. MBH…
The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) will be able to detect massive black hole mergers throughout the visible Universe. These observations will provide unique information about black hole formation and growth, and the role black…
I review the scientific potential of the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), a space-borne gravitational wave (GW) observatory to be launched in the early 30s'. Thanks to its sensitivity in the milli-Hz frequency range, LISA will…
Since a black hole does not emit light from its interior, nor does it have a surface on which light from nearby sources can be reflected, observational study of black hole physics requires observing the gravitational impact of the black…
In the past decade, much effort was devoted to measure the masses of supermassive black holes in galactic nuclei, to establish the relation between black hole mass and the global/nuclear properties of the host galaxy, and to understand the…
Electromagnetic observations have provided strong evidence for the existence of massive black holes in the center of galaxies, but their origin is still poorly known. Different scenarios for the formation and evolution of massive black…
Some issues relevant for the formation of supermassive black holes are discused and estimates of the event rates for the emission of gravitational waves by coalescing supermassive black hole binaries are given. The models take into account…
Black holes, an extreme consequence of the mathematics of General Relativity, have long been suspected of being the prime movers of quasars, which emit more energy than any other objects in the Universe. Recent evidence indicates that…
This review discusses the current status of supermassive black hole research, as seen from a purely observational standpoint. Since the early '90s, rapid technological advances, most notably the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, the…
Large-scale (i.e., $\gtrsim {\rm kpc}$) and micro-Gauss scale magnetic fields have been observed throughout the Milky Way and nearby galaxies. These fields depend on the geometry and matter-energy composition, can display complicated…
[Abridged] [...] We study the mass and spin evolution of massive black holes within a semianalytical galaxy-formation model that follows the evolution of dark-matter halos along merger trees, as well as that of the baryonic components (hot…
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…
This White Paper to the National Academy of Sciences Astro2010 Decadal Review Committee outlines some of the outstanding questions regarding the assembly history of Massive Black Holes in the nuclei of galaxies and the revolutionary…
We present a new model for the formation of black holes in cosmological simulations, motivated by the first star formation. Black holes form from high density peaks of primordial gas, and grow via both gas accretion and mergers. Massive…
The most massive black holes, lurking at the centers of large galaxies, must have formed less than a billion years after the big bang, as they are visible today in the form of bright quasars at redshift larger than six. Their early…
Now that LIGO has revealed the existence of a large number of binary black holes, identifying their origin becomes an important challenge. They might originate in more isolated regions of the galaxy or alternatively they might reside in…
Black holes are popping up all over the place: in compact binary X-ray sources and GRBs, in quasars, AGNs and the cores of all bulge galaxies, in binary black holes and binary black hole-neutron stars, and maybe even in the LHC! Black holes…
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…
We review the state of the evidence for the existence and observational appearance of supermassive black hole binaries. Such objects are expected from standard hierarchical galaxy evolution to form after two galaxies, each containing a…