Related papers: Low-Mass Galaxy Interactions Trigger Black Hole Ac…
We link the evolution of the galaxies in the hierarchical clustering scenario with the changing accretion rates of cold gas onto the central massive black holes that power the quasars. We base on galaxy interactions as main triggers of…
The black holes that have been detected via gravitational waves (GW) can have either astrophysical or primordial origin. Some GW events show significant spin for one of the components and have been assumed to be astrophysical, since…
Large extragalactic surveys allow us to trace, in a statistical sense, how supermassive black holes, their host galaxies, and their dark matter halos evolve together over cosmic time, and so explore the consequences of AGN feedback on…
We study supermassive black holes (BHs) in merging galaxies, using a suite of hydrodynamical simulations with very high spatial (~10 pc) and temporal (~1 Myr) resolution, where we vary the initial mass ratio, the orbital configuration, and…
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…
A fundamental role is attributed to supermassive black holes (SMBH), and the feedback they generate, in the evolution of galaxies. But theoretical models trying to reproduce the relation between the SMBH mass and stellar velocity dispersion…
What is the relevance of major mergers and interactions as triggering mechanisms for active galactic nuclei (AGN) activity? To answer this longstanding question, we analyze 140 XMM-selected AGN host galaxies and a matched control sample of…
The population of massive black holes (MBHs) in dwarf galaxies is elusive, but fundamentally important to understand the coevolution of black holes with their hosts and the formation of the first collapsed objects in the Universe. While…
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 existence of supermassive black holes lurking in the centers of galaxies and of stellar binary systems containing a black hole with a few solar masses has been established beyond reasonable doubt. The idea that black holes of…
We show that the black hole-bulge mass scaling relations observed from the local to the high-z Universe can be largely or even entirely explained by a non-causal origin, i.e. they do not imply the need for any physically coupled growth of…
The close neighbourhood of a supermassive black hole contains not only accreting gas and dust, but also stellar-sized objects like stars, stellar-mass black holes, neutron stars, and dust-enshrouded objects that altogether form a dense…
Observations of the most distant bright quasars imply that billion solar mass supermassive black holes (SMBH) have to be assembled within the first eight hundred million years. Under our standard galaxy formation scenario such fast growth…
The observed scaling relations between supermassive black hole masses and their host galaxy properties indicate that supermassive black holes influence the evolution of galaxies. However, the scaling relations may be affected by selection…
Detailed high-resolution observations of the innermost regions of nearby galaxies have revealed the presence of supermassive black holes1. These black holes may interact with their host galaxies by means of 'feedback' in the form of energy…
Supernova theory suggests that black holes of a stellar origin cannot attain masses in the range of 50-135 solar masses in isolation. We argue here that this mass gap is filled in by black holes that grow by gas accretion in dense stellar…
[Abridged] To investigate the evolution in the relation between galaxy stellar and central black hole mass we construct a volume limited complete sample of 85 AGN with host galaxy stellar masses M_{*} > 10^{10.5} M_{sol}, and specific X-ray…
Among the four black hole binary merger events detected by LIGO, six progenitor black holes have masses greater than 20\,$M_\odot$. The existence of such massive BHs calls for extreme metal-poor stars as the progenitors. An alternative…
We analyze deep X-ray, optical and mid-infrared Spitzer observations of the CDF-N/GOODS-N region to study 13 submillimeter-detected galaxies (SMGs) with spectroscopic redshifts (median z=2.2). We find a correlation between the estimated…
Understanding the relative roles of large-scale environment and internal host-galaxy processes in shaping AGN activity is essential for constraining models of black-hole growth and galaxy evolution. We investigate how the environment of…