Related papers: Evolution of AGN - an optical view

Growing supermassive black holes (Active Galactic Nuclei; AGN) release energy with the potential to alter their host galaxies and larger-scale environment; a process named "AGN feedback". Feedback is a required component of galaxy formation…

[Abriged] Supermassive black holes (SMBH) lurk in the nuclei of most massive galaxies, perhaps in all of them. The tight observed scaling relations between SMBH masses and structural properties of their host spheroids likely indicate that…

We present a first attempt to derive the cosmological evolution of the kinetic luminosity function of AGN based on the joint evolution of the flat spectrum radio and hard X-ray selected AGN luminosity functions. An empirical correlation…

In this series of four lectures, I discuss four important aspects of AGN host galaxies. In Lecture #1, I address the starburst-AGN connection. First, I briefly review the primary diagnostic tools that are used to quantify and distinguish…

Deep X-ray surveys by Chandra and XMM-Newton have resolved about 80% of the 2-10 keV cosmic extragalactic X-ray background (CXRB) into point sources, the majority of which are obscured AGN. The obscuration might be connected to processes…

The connection between AGN and their host galaxies has been widely studied over recent years, showing it to be of great importance for providing answers to some fundamental questions related with AGN fueling mechanisms, their formation and…

Active galactic nuclei (AGN) produce the highest intrinsic luminosities in the Universe from within a compact region. The central engine is thought to be powered by accretion onto a supermassive black hole. A fraction of this huge release…

BL Lac objects are an elusive and rare class of active galactic nuclei. For years their evolutionary behavior has appeared inconsistent with the trend observed in the population of AGN at large. The so-called ``negative'' evolution implies…

The low luminosity QSO (LLQSO) sample consists of type 1 active galactic nuclei (AGN) up to a redshift of z=0.06 in the Hamburg/ESO QSO survey. Its purpose is to study how the brightest AGN in the nearby universe evolve with respect to AGN…

We present synthesis models of the X-ray background where the available X-ray observational constraints are used to derive information on the AGN population properties. We show the need for luminous X-ray absorbed AGNs, the QSO2s, in…

Active galactic nuclei (AGN) are the signposts of black hole growth, and likely play an important role in galaxy evolution. An outstanding question is whether AGN of different spectral types indicate different evolutionary stages in the…

We present the estimate of the evolution of type 1 AGNs in the hard (2-10 keV) X-rays drawn from the HELLAS survey, and in the IR (15um) obtained from the ELAIS survey. We find that the local luminosity function (LF) of AGN1 in the 2-10 keV…

We investigate the luminosity evolution of the host galaxies of radio-loud AGN through Hubble Space Telescope imaging of 72 BL Lac objects, including new STIS imaging of nine z > 0.6 BL Lacs. With their intrinsically low accretion rates and…

Massive large-scale AGN outflows are an important element of galaxy evolution, being a way through which the AGN can affect most of the host galaxy. However, outflows evolve on timescales much longer than typical AGN episode durations,…

We perform three-dimensional radiation hydrodynamic simulations of uniform dusty gas clouds irradiated by an active galactic nucleus (AGN) to investigate the dependence of evolution of clouds on the ionization parameter $\mathcal{U}$ and…

The extent of black hole growth during different galaxy evolution phases and the connection between galaxy compactness and AGN activity remain poorly understood. We use Hubble Space Telescope imaging of the CANDELS fields to identify…

The present status of the ESO key-programme ``A Homogeneous Bright QSO Survey'' is described together with the first results concerning the QSO counts and the optical luminosity function. The related analysis of the evolution of the radio…

We present an analysis of star formation and nuclear activity of about 28000 galaxies in a volume-limited sample taken from SDSS DR4 low-redshift catalogue (LRC) taken from the New York University Value Added Galaxy Catalogue (NYU-VAGC) of…

The Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS) combines deep HST and Spitzer imaging with the deepest Chandra/XMM observations to probe obscured AGN at higher redshifts than previous multiwavelength surveys. We present a…

We present an analysis of X-ray variability in a flux limited sample of QSOs. Selected from our deep ROSAT survey, these QSOs span a wide range in redshift ($0.1<z<3.2$) and are typically very faint, so we have developed a method to…