Related papers: Supermassive Black Hole Research in the Post-HST E…
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…
Despite solid theoretical and observational grounds for the pairing of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) after galaxy mergers, definitive evidence for the existence of close (sub-parsec) separation SMBH binaries (SMBHBs) approaching merger…
Gravitationally bound supermassive black hole binaries (SBHBs) are thought to be a natural product of galactic mergers and growth of the large scale structure in the universe. They however remain observationally elusive, thus raising a…
One of the main themes in extragalactic astronomy for the next decade will be the evolution of galaxies over cosmic time. Many future observatories, including JWST, ALMA, GMT, TMT and E-ELT will intensively observe starlight over a broad…
The discoveries made over the past 20 years by Chandra and XMM-Newton surveys in conjunction with multiwavelength imaging and spectroscopic data available in the same fields have significantly changed the view of the supermassive black hole…
We present here an overview of recent work in the subject of astrophysical manifestations of super-massive black hole (SMBH) mergers. This is a field that has been traditionally driven by theoretical work, but in recent years has also…
Supermassive black hole (SMBH) binary systems are unavoidable outcomes of galaxy mergers. Their dynamics encode information about their formation and growth, the composition of their host galactic nuclei, the evolution of galaxies, and the…
Many galaxies contain supermassive black holes (SMBHs), whose formation and history raise many puzzles. Pulsar timing arrays have recently discovered a low-frequency cosmological "hum" of gravitational waves that may be emitted by SMBH…
Direct imaging of black hole shadow halos has firmly confirmed the existence of supermassive black holes (SMBHs), with millions of solar masses, residing at the centers of the Milky Way and M87 galaxies. These groundbreaking discoveries…
Galaxy mergers are common processes in the Universe. As a large fraction of galaxies hosts at their centres a central supermassive black hole (SMBH), mergers can lead to the formation of a supermassive black hole binary (SMBHB). The…
Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are found at the centre of every massive galaxy, with their masses tightly connected to their host galaxies through a co-evolution over cosmic time. For massive ellipticals, the SMBH mass ($M_\text{BH}$)…
In the last decade, a combination of high sensitivity, high spatial resolution observations and of coordinated multi-wavelength surveys has revolutionized our view of extra-galactic black hole (BH) astrophysics. We now know that…
Establishing or ruling out, either through solid mass measurements or upper limits, the presence of intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) at the centers of star clusters would profoundly impact our understanding of problems ranging from the…
The formation and evolution of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in the Universe remains an open question in cosmology. We show for the first time that the evolution of SMBHs with redshift leads to a unique signature on the angular…
We review the motivation and search for supermassive black holes (BHs) in galaxies. Energetic nuclear activity provides indirect but compelling evidence for BH engines. Ground-based dynamical searches for central dark objects are reviewed…
Electromagnetic observations over the last 15 years have yielded a growing appreciation for the importance of supermassive black holes (SMBH) to the evolution of galaxies, and for the intricacies of dynamical interactions in our own…
Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are common in local galactic nuclei, and SMBHs as massive as several billion solar masses already exist at redshift z=6. These earliest SMBHs may grow by the combination of radiation-pressure-limited…
(Abridged) The repeated discovery of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at the centers of galactic bulges, and the discovery of relations between the SMBH mass (M) and the properties of these bulges, has been fundamental in directing our…
Observations of the early universe at redshifts of order 10, collected during the last several years presented by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and recent data by the James Webb Space telescope (JWST) created strong doubts on the…
Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are common in local galactic nuclei, and SMBHs as massive as several billion solar masses already exist at redshift z=6. These earliest SMBHs may arise by the combination of Eddington-limited growth and…