Related papers: Low-Mass Galaxy Interactions Trigger Black Hole Ac…
High-resolution simulations of supermassive black holes in isolated galaxies have suggested the importance of short (~10 Myr) episodes of rapid accretion caused by interactions between the black hole and massive dense clouds within the…
The tight relationship between the masses of black holes and galaxy spheroids in nearby galaxies implies a causal connection between the growth of these two components. Optically luminous quasars host the most prodigious accreting black…
Despite traditional thinking, an appreciable population of massive black holes may be lurking in dwarf galaxies. Prior to the last decade, nearly all massive black holes were found in the nuclei of giant galaxies and the existence of…
Obscured or narrow-line active galaxies offer an unobstructed view of the quasar environment in the presence of a luminous and vigorously accreting black hole. We exploit the large new sample of optically selected luminous narrow-line…
The first stars in the universe, forming at redshifts z>15 in minihalos with masses of order 10^6 Msun, may leave behind black holes as their remnants. These objects could conceivably serve as "seeds" for much larger black holes observed at…
Dual AGN are important for understanding galaxy-merger-triggered fueling of black holes and hierarchical growth of structures. The least explored type of dual AGN are those associated with mergers of two dwarf galaxies. According to…
The origin of the black-hole:black-hole mergers discovered through gravitational waves with for example the LIGO/Virgo collaboration are a mystery. We investigate the idea that some of these black holes originate from the centers of…
The low-mass end of low-mass galaxies is largely unexplored in AGN studies, but it is essential for extending our understanding of the black hole-galaxy coevolution. We surveyed the 3D-HST catalog and collected a sample of 546 dwarf…
We explore the question of the rapid buildup of black hole mass in the early universe employing a growing black hole mass-based determination of both jet and disk powers predicted in recent theoretical work on black hole accretion and jet…
The growth of supermassive black holes appears to be driven by galaxy mergers, violent merger-free processes and/or `secular' processes. In order to quantify the effects of secular evolution on black hole growth, we study a sample of active…
Primordial black holes in the asteroid-mass window ($\sim 10^{-16}$ to $10^{-11} \rm M_{\odot}$), which might constitute all the dark matter, can be captured by stars when they traverse them at low enough velocity. After being placed on a…
Galaxy interactions and mergers are thought to play an important role in the evolution of galaxies. Studies in the nearby universe show a higher AGN fraction in interacting and merging galaxies than their isolated counterparts, indicating…
Models of galaxy formation invoke the major merger of gas-rich progenitor galaxies as the trigger for significant phases of black hole growth and the associated feedback that suppresses star formation to create red spheroidal remnants.…
The formation of the first massive objects in the infant Universe remains impossible to observe directly and yet it sets the stage for the subsequent evolution of galaxies. While some black holes with masses > billion solar masses? have…
The most frequently proposed model for the origin of quasars holds that the high accretion rates seen in luminous active galactic nuclei are primarily triggered during major mergers between gas-rich galaxies. While plausible for decades,…
The heaviest neutron stars and lightest black holes expected to be produced by stellar evolution leave the mass-range $2.2$ M$_{\odot}\lesssim m \lesssim 5$ M$_\odot$ largely unpopulated. Objects found in this so-called lower mass gap…
The first massive astrophysical black holes likely formed at high redshifts (z>10) at the centers of low mass (~10^6 Msun) dark matter concentrations. These black holes grow by mergers and gas accretion, evolve into the population of bright…
Recent observations support the idea that nuclear black holes grew by gas accretion while shining as luminous quasars at high redshift, and they establish a relation of the black hole mass with the host galaxy's spheroidal stellar system.…
We have obtained deep, multi-band imaging observations around three of the most distant known quasars at redshifts z>6. Standard accretion theory predicts that the supermassive black holes present in these quasars were formed at a very…
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has unveiled numerous massive black holes (BHs) in faint, broad-line active galactic nuclei (AGNs). The discovery highlights the presence of dust-reddened AGN populations, referred to as "little red…