Related papers: Black Hole Demographics
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…
Until recently our knowledge of the Galactic Bulge stellar populations was based on the study of a few low extinction windows. Large photometric and spectroscopic surveys are now underway to map large areas of the bulge. They probe several…
The coherent rise and fall of the quasar population is discussed in terms of gas accretion onto massive black holes, governed by the hierarchically growing environment. The rise is related to plentiful accretion during the assemblage of the…
We present a brief qualitative overview of the current state of the problem of Hubble expansion at the sufficiently small scales (e.g., in planetary systems or local intergalactic volume). The crucial drawbacks of the available theoretical…
In this review the correlations between host galaxy properties and black-hole mass determined from nearby quiescent galaxies are briefly discussed, before proceeding to investigate their application to active galactic nuclei (AGN). The…
We review the current state of dynamical modeling for galaxies in terms of being able to measure both the central black hole mass and stellar orbital structure. Both of these must be known adequately to measure either property. The current…
Because of the very definition of black holes --- no light escapes them and falling objects get infinitely faint when approaching --- it is impossible to ever prove that they exist. However, electromagnetic and gravitational-wave…
The massive black holes we observe in galaxies today are the natural end-product of a complex evolutionary path, in which black holes seeded in proto-galaxies at high redshift grow through cosmic history via a sequence of mergers and…
At low redshift, massive black holes are found in the centers of almost all large elliptical galaxies, and also in many lower-mass systems. Their evolution is believed to be inextricably entangled with that of their host galaxies. On the…
The next generation of electromagnetic and gravitational wave observatories will open unprecedented windows to the birth of the first supermassive black holes. This has the potential to reveal their origin and growth in the first billion…
We explore the growth of super-massive black holes and host galaxy bulges in the galaxy population using the Millennium Run LCDM simulation coupled with a model of galaxy formation. We find that, if galaxy mergers are the primary drivers…
We investigate the evolution of high redshift seed black hole masses at late times and their observational signatures. The massive black hole seeds studied here form at extremely high redshifts from the direct collapse of pre-galactic gas…
We present a simple semi-numerical model designed to explore black hole growth and galaxy evolution. This method builds on a previous model for black hole accretion that uses a semi-numerical galaxy formation model and universal Eddington…
A significant fraction of local galaxies show evidence of nuclear activity. I argue that the bulk of this activity, while energetically not remarkable, derives from accretion onto a central massive black hole. The statistics of nearby…
In view of the extensive evidence of tight inter-relationships between spheroidal galaxies (and galactic bulges) with massive black holes hosted at their centers, a consistent model must deal jointly with the evolution of the two…
Significant progress has been made in the last few years on understanding how supermassive black holes form and grow. In this paper, we begin by reviewing the spectral signatures of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) ranging from radio to hard…
Since the 1990s, we have known that there is a super-massive black hole in every galaxy, and that its mass is proportional to the mass of the bulge. To better understand how these black holes were formed, in symbiosis with their galaxies,…
The spin of a black hole is an important quantity to study, providing a window into the processes by which a black hole was born and grew. Further, spin can be a potent energy source for powering relativistic jets and energetic particle…
We track the growth and evolution of high redshift seed black holes over cosmic time. This population of massive, initial black hole seeds form at these early epochs from the direct collapse of pre-galactic gas discs. Populating dark matter…
We investigate the coupled formation and evolution of galaxies and their embedded supermassive black holes using state-of-the-art hydrodynamic simulations of cosmological structure formation. For the first time, we self-consistently follow…