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Related papers: Evolution of supermassive black holes

200 papers

We discuss a model for the early assembly of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at the center of galaxies that trace their hierarchical build-up far up in the dark halo `merger tree'. Motivated by the observations of luminous quasars around…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-11 Marta Volonteri , Martin J. Rees

The evolution of the supermassive Black Hole (BH) population across cosmic times remains a central unresolved issue in modern astrophysics, due to the many noticeable uncertainties in the involved physical processes that span a huge range…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2025-12-05 Andrea Lapi , Francesco Shankar , Michele Bosi , Daniel Roberts , Hao Fu , Karthik M. Varadarajan , Lumen Boco

The Eddington ratio ($\lambda_{\rm Edd}$) of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) is a fundamental parameter that governs the cosmic growth of SMBHs. Although gas mass accretion onto SMBHs is sustained when they are surrounded by large amounts…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2018-05-23 Takuma Izumi

The hierarchical nature of galaxy formation in the $\Lambda$CDM framework often leads to multiple supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in the galactic nuclei. The timescale over which galaxies merge, plays a crucial role in shaping the…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-10-27 Navonil Saha , Peter Berczik , Andreas Just , Margarita Sobolenko

The emergence of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in the early universe remains a topic of profound interest and debate. In this paper, we investigate the formation and growth of the first SMBHs within the framework of Modified Gravity…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2024-03-12 Mohammad H. Zhoolideh Haghighi , John Moffat

During a galaxy merger, the supermassive black hole (SMBH) in each galaxy is thought to sink to the center of the potential and form a supermassive black hole binary; this binary can eject stars via 3-body scattering, bringing the SMBHs…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-09-23 Kelly Holley-Bockelmann , Fazeel Mahmood Khan

Massive black holes (BHs) inhabit local galaxies, including the Milky Way and some dwarf galaxies. BH formation, occurring at early cosmic times, must account for the properties of BHs in today's galaxies, notably why some galaxies host a…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2017-07-28 Melanie Habouzit , Marta Volonteri , Yohan Dubois

Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are found in the centers of massive galaxies, and galaxy mergers should eventually lead to SMBH mergers. Quasar activity has long been associated with galaxy mergers, so here we investigate if supermassive…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-04-16 J. Andrew Casey-Clyde , Chiara M. F. Mingarelli , Jenny E. Greene , Andy D. Goulding , Siyuan Chen , Jonathan R. Trump

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…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2025-05-27 Ke-Jung Chen

Observations of massive galaxies at low redshift have revealed approximately linear scaling relations between the mass of a supermassive black hole (SMBH) and properties of its host galaxy. How these scaling relations evolve with redshift…

We study the mass assembly and spin evolution of supermassive black holes (BHs) across cosmic time as well as the impact of gravitational recoil on the population of nuclear and wandering black holes (wBHs) by using the semi-analytical…

Next-generation ground-based gravitational wave (GW) detectors are expected to observe millions of binary black hole mergers, a fraction of which will be strongly lensed by intervening galaxies or clusters, producing multiple images with…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2026-01-16 Huan Zhou , Bin Liu , Zheng-Xiang Li , Xi-Jing Wang , Kai Liao

The rapid emergence of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in the early Universe poses a challenge to current models of black hole growth. One promising formation pathway is the direct collapse black hole (DCBH) scenario, in which gas in…

Recent Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations have revealed that a majority of active galactic nuclei (AGN) at z ~ 1-3 are resident in isolated disk galaxies, contrary to the usual expectation that AGN are triggered by mergers. Here we…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-06-12 Victor P. Debattista , Stelios Kazantzidis , Frank C. van den Bosch

Supermassive binary black holes (SBBHs) are a natural outcome of galaxy mergers. Here we show that low-frequency ($f \leq 10^{-6}$ Hz) quasi-periodic variability observed from cosmic blazar sources can provide substantial inductive support…

Astrophysics · Physics 2008-11-26 Frank M. Rieger

We investigate the coupled formation and evolution of galaxies and their embedded supermassive black holes using state-of-the-art hydrodynamic simulations of cosmological structure formation. For the first time, we self-consistently follow…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-13 Tiziana Di Matteo , Joerg Colberg , Volker Springel , Lars Hernquist , Debora Sijacki

The energy and momentum deposited by the radiation from accretion onto the supermassive black holes (BHs) that reside at the centres of virtually all galaxies can halt or even reverse gas inflow, providing a natural mechanism for…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-05-14 C. M. Booth , Joop Schaye

Supermassive black hole (BH) masses (MBH) are strongly correlated with galaxy stellar bulge masses (Mbulge) and there are several ideas to explain the origin of this relationship. This study isolates the role of galaxy mergers from…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-13 Chien Y. Peng

High-redshift luminous quasars powered by accreting supermassive black holes (SMBHs) with mass $\gtrsim 10^9 M_\odot$ constrain their formation pathways. We investigate the formation of heavy seeds of SMBHs through gas collapse in the…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2021-08-25 Wenxiu Li , Kohei Inayoshi , Yu Qiu

In a star cluster with a sufficiently large escape velocity, black holes (BHs) that are produced by BH mergers can be retained, dynamically form new BH binaries, and merge again. This process can repeat several times and lead to significant…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2019-07-17 Fabio Antonini , Mark Gieles , Alessia Gualandris