Related papers: Ultraluminous Starbursts from SMBH-induced outflow…
The centre of our Galaxy is one of the most studied and yet enigmatic places in the Universe. At a distance of about 8 kpc from our Sun, the Galactic centre (GC) is the ideal environment to study the extreme processes that take place in the…
We present the results of recent studies on the co-evolution of galaxies and the supermassive black holes (SMBHs) using Herschel far-infrared and Chandra X-ray observations in the Bo\"otes survey region. For a sample of star-forming (SF)…
Theoretical models and numerical simulations have established a framework of galaxy evolution in which galaxies merge and create dual supermassive black holes (with separations of one to ten kiloparsecs), which eventually sink into the…
Understanding the processes that drive galaxy formation and shape the observed properties of galaxies is one of the most interesting and challenging frontier problems of modern astrophysics. We now know that the evolution of galaxies is…
The strongest starbursts are observed towards galaxy nuclei, or circumnuclear regions. However in interacting galaxies, star formation is also triggered in overlap regions far from nuclei, in spiral arms and sometimes in tidal tails. What…
Two main modes of star formation are know to control the growth of galaxies: a relatively steady one in disk-like galaxies, defining a tight star formation rate (SFR)-stellar mass sequence, and a starburst mode in outliers to such a…
We consider super-critical accretion with angular momentum onto stellar-mass black holes as a possible mechanism for growing billion-solar-mass holes from light seeds at early times. We use the radiatively-inefficient "slim disk" solution…
We propose a new mechanism for the growth of supermassive black hole (BH) seeds in the star-forming progenitors of local early-type galaxies (ETGs) at $z\gtrsim 1$. This envisages the migration and merging of stellar compact remnants…
Given its velocity dispersion, the early-type galaxy NGC 1600 has an unusually massive ($M_\bullet = 1.7 \times 10^{10} M_\odot$) central supermassive black hole (SMBH), surrounded by a large core ($r_\mathrm{b} = 0.7$ kpc) with a…
Direct collapse of supermassive stars (SMSs) is a possible pathway for generating supermassive black holes in the early universe. It is expected that an SMS could form via very rapid mass accretion with Mdot ~ 0.1 - 1 Msun/yr during the…
Momentum feedback from super-Eddington accretion offers a simple explanation for the observed M-sigma and M-M_{spheroid} relations between supermassive black holes (SMBH) and the spheroids of their host galaxies. Recently Ferrarese et al.…
It is well established that cosmic supermassive black hole (SMBH) growth peaks at $z\approx1.5-2$, followed by a strong decline of $\approx1-1.5\,\rm dex$ toward the present day, with the comoving number density of higher-luminosity active…
We study very-high rate spherically symmetric accretion flows onto a massive black hole (BH; 10^2 < M_BH < 10^6 Msun) embedded in a dense gas cloud with a low abundance of metals, performing one-dimensional hydrodynamical simulations which…
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…
Recent observations confirm the existence of ultra-massive black holes (UMBH) in the nuclei of compact galaxies, with physical properties similar to NGC 1277. The nature of these objects poses a new puzzle to the `black hole-host galaxy…
The origin of super-massive black holes in the early universe remains poorly understood.Gravitational collapse of a massive primordial gas cloud is a promising initial process,but theoretical studies have difficulty growing the black hole…
I study the possibility that a cooling flow (CF) exists at the main phase of super massive black hole (SMBH) growth during galaxy formation. To ensure that jets launched by the SMBH efficiently expel gas from the galaxy, as is required by…
The formation of supermassive stars (SMSs) via rapid mass accretion and their direct collapse into black holes (BHs) is a promising pathway for sowing seeds of supermassive BHs in the early universe. We calculate the evolution of rapidly…
It has long been thought that nuclear star clusters (NSCs) cannot co-exist with the most massive supermassive black holes (SMBHs), since SMBH mergers - unavoidable for the most massive systems - would scatter away NSC stars. However,…
In addition to a supermassive black hole (SMBH), the central parsec of the Milky Way hosts over a hundred of massive, high velocity young stars whose existence, and organisation of a subset of them in one, or possibly two, mis-aligned…