Related papers: Proto-Quasars:Physical States and Observable Prope…
A new model for coevolution of galaxies and supermassive black holes (SMBH) is presented that is physically based. The evolutionary track starts with an event that triggers a significant starburst in the central region of a galaxy. In this…
We model the cosmological co-evolution of galaxies and their central supermassive black holes (BHs) within a semi-analytical framework developed on the outputs of the Millennium Simulation (Croton et al., 2006; De Lucia & Blaizot, 2007). In…
The absorption properties of the first low-mass protogalaxies (mini-halos) forming at high redshifts in the 21-cm line of atomic hydrogen are considered. The absorption properties of these protogalaxies are shown to depend strongly on both…
The detection of gravitational waves (GWs) from binary black hole (BBH) coalescences by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) Collaboration has raised fundamental questions about the genesis of these events. In this chapter, we explore the possibility…
The early evolution of the quasar luminosity function (QLF) and black hole mass function (BHMF) encodes key information on the physics determining the radiative and accretion processes of supermassive black holes (BHs) in high-$z$ quasars.…
We report on deep imaging in 2 filters with the PC2 camera of HST, of five QSOs at redshift ~2, with a range of optical and radio luminosity. The observations included a suite of PSF observations which were used to construct new PSF models,…
We used the 1.4 GHz NVSS to study radio sources in two color-selected QSO samples: a volume-limited sample of 1313 QSOs defined by M_i < -23 in the redshift range 0.2 < z < 0.45 and a magnitude-limited sample of 2471 QSOs with m_r < 18.5…
We present stellar velocity dispersion measurements in the host galaxies of 10 luminous quasars (M_V < -23) using the Ca H&K lines in off-nuclear spectra. We combine these data with effective radii and magnitudes from the literature to…
We are exploring galaxy evolution in low density environments exploiting smooth particle hydrodynamic simulations including chemo-photometric implementation. From a large grid of simulations of galaxy encounters and mergers starting from…
This article discusses the our changing knowledge of the evolution of AGN from an optical perspective. It focusses on optically-unobscured (type-1) AGN as it is much trickier to investigate the evolution type-2 objects from an optical point…
We present results from a pilot HST ACS deep imaging study in broad-band V of five low-redshift QSO host galaxies classified in the literature as ellipticals. The aim of our study is to determine whether these early-type hosts formed at…
The comoving mass density of massive black hole (MBH) remnants from pre-galactic star formation could have been similar in magnitude to the mass-density of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in the present-day universe. We show that the…
We investigate the rapid growth phase of supermassive black holes (BHs) within the hydrodynamical cosmological \eagle simulation. This non-linear phase of BH growth occurs within $\sim$$L_{*}$ galaxies, embedded between two regulatory…
We study the host galaxies of four Iron Low-Ionization Broad Absorption-line Quasars (FeLoBALs) using Hubble Space Telescope imaging data, investigating the possibility that they represent a transition between an obscured AGN and an…
Active galaxies hosting two accreting and merging super-massive black holes (SMBHs) -- dual Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) -- are predicted by many current and popular models of black hole-galaxy co-evolution. We present here the results of a…
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has observed compact, massive proto-stellar clusters of low metallicity in the Cosmic Gems arc galaxy at high redshift, which represent likely precursors to globular clusters. We model the mass growth…
Primordial Black Holes (PBH) from peaks in the curvature power spectrum could constitute today an important fraction of the Dark Matter in the Universe. At horizon reentry, during the radiation era, order one fluctuations collapse…
Gravitational lensing assists in the detection of quasar hosts by amplifying and distorting the host light away from the unresolved quasar core images. We present the results of HST observations of 30 quasar hosts at redshifts 1 < z < 4.5.…
The clustering properties of clusters, galaxies and AGN as a function of redshift are briefly discussed. It appears that extremely red objects at z ~ 1, and objects with J-K > 1.7 and photometric redshifts 2 < z_phot < 4 are highly…
We present an expanded sample of low-mass black holes (BHs) found in galactic nuclei. Using standard virial mass techniques to estimate BH masses, we select from the Fourth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey all broad-line active…