Related papers: Black Holes in Active Galaxies
Black holes, an extreme consequence of the mathematics of General Relativity, have long been suspected of being the prime movers of quasars, which emit more energy than any other objects in the Universe. Recent evidence indicates that…
The article summarizes the observational evidence for the existence of massive black holes, as well as the current knowledge about their abundance, their mass and spin distributions, and their cosmic evolution within and together with their…
Supermassive black holes are believed to be ubiquitous at the centers of galaxies. Measuring their masses is extremely challenging yet essential for understanding their role in the formation and evolution of cosmic structure. We present a…
We model the spectral energy distribution of the type 1 Seyfert galaxies, fitting data from simultaneous optical, UV, and X-ray monitoring observations. We assume a geometry consisting of a hot central Comptonizing region surrounded by a…
There is abundant evidence that heating processes in the central regions of elliptical galaxies has both prevented large-scale cooling flows and assisted in the expulsion of metal rich gas. We now know that each such spheroidal system…
Supermassive black holes in the centre of galaxies dominate the gravitational potential of their surrounding stellar clusters. In these dense environments, stars follow nearly Keplerian orbits, which get slowly distorted as a result of the…
We present mass functions of distant actively accreting supermassive black holes residing in luminous quasars discovered in the Large Bright Quasar Survey, the Bright Quasar Survey, and the Fall Equatorial Stripe of the Sloan Digital Sky…
Estimating the black hole mass at the center of galaxies is a fundamental step not only for understanding the physics of accretion, but also for the cosmological evolution of galaxies. Recently a new method, based solely on X-ray data, was…
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…
Massive Black Holes detected in the centers of many nearby galaxies show an approximately linear relation with the luminosity of the host bulge, with the black hole mass being 0.001-0.002 of the bulge mass. Previous work suggested that…
External accretion events such as a galaxy merger or the accretion of gas from the immediate environment of a galaxy, can create a large misalignment between the gas and the stellar kinematics. Numerical simulations have suggested that…
Black-hole masses of the highest redshift quasars (4 <~ z <~ 6) are estimated using a previously presented scaling relationship, derived from reverberation mapping of nearby quasars, and compared to quasars at lower redshift. It is shown…
We present the results of long-term photometric monitoring of two active galactic nuclei, 2MASX J08535955+7700543 (z $\sim$ 0.106) and VII Zw 244 (z $\sim$ 0.131), being investigated by the reverberation mapping method in medium-band…
The masses of 68 supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in nearby (z<0.15) active galactic nuclei (AGNs) detected by the INTEGRAL observatory in the hard X-ray energy band (17-60 keV) outside the Galactic plane (|b| > 5 degrees) have been…
The deep connection between galaxies and their supermassive black holes is central to modern astrophysics and cosmology. The observed correlation between galaxy and black hole mass is usually attributed to the contribution of major mergers…
As star-forming galaxies approach or exceed a stellar mass around $10^{11} M_\odot$, they are increasingly likely to be quenched in a process generically called mass quenching. Central galaxies, which are quenched via mass rather than…
Based on numerical simulations of gas-rich galaxy mergers, we discuss a model in which quasar activity is tied to the self-regulated growth of supermassive black holes in galaxies. Nuclear inflow of gas attending a galaxy collision triggers…
We present spatially extended gas kinematics at parsec-scale resolution for the nuclear regions of four nearby disk galaxies, and model them as rotation of a gas disk in the joint potential of the stellar bulge and a putative central black…
We use the clustering of galaxies around distant active-galactic nuclei to derive an estimate of the relationship between galaxy and black hole mass that obtained during the ancient quasar epoch, at redshifts 2 <~ z <~ 3, when giant black…
Results of precise measurements of the periods of pulsars discovered in the central regions of globular clusters are shown to be approaching the capabilities of testing the existence of a central black hole. For example, in the case of M 15…