Related papers: Massive Black Holes: formation and evolution
In the last decades, luminous accreting super-massive black holes have been discovered within the first Gyr after the Big Bang, but their origin is still an unsolved mystery. We discuss our state-of-the-art theoretical knowledge of their…
I present an elementary primer of black hole physics, including its general relativity basis, all peppered with astrophysical illustrations. Following a brief review of the process stellar collapse to a black hole, I discuss the…
Massive black holes (MBHs), with masses in the range 10^3-10^8 Msolar, which merge with a companion black hole of similar mass are expected to be the most powerful source of gravitational radiation in the frequency range probed by LISA. MBH…
One of the key open questions in cosmology today pertains to understanding when, where and how super massive black holes form, while it is clear that mergers likely play a significant role in the growth cycles of black holes, how…
Black holes with masses of $\rm 10^6-10^9~M_{\odot}$ dwell in the centers of most galaxies, but their formation mechanisms are not well known. A subdominant dissipative component of dark matter with similar properties to the ordinary…
The study of galaxy mergers and supermassive binary black holes (SMBBHs) is central to our understanding of the galaxy and black hole assembly and (co-)evolution at the epoch of structure formation and throughout cosmic history. Galaxy…
We briefly review the historical development of the ideas regarding the first supermassive black hole seeds, the physics of their formation and radiative feedback, recent theoretical and observational progress, and our outlook for the…
This review discusses the current status of supermassive black hole research, as seen from a purely observational standpoint. Since the early '90s, rapid technological advances, most notably the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, the…
In the local universe, black hole masses have been inferred from the observed increase in the velocities of stars at the centres of their host galaxies. So far, masses of supermassive black holes in the early universe have only been…
With detections of quasars powered by increasingly massive black holes (BHs) at increasingly early times in cosmic history over the past decade, there has been correspondingly rapid progress made on the theory of early BH formation and…
Black holes are popping up all over the place: in compact binary X-ray sources and GRBs, in quasars, AGNs and the cores of all bulge galaxies, in binary black holes and binary black hole-neutron stars, and maybe even in the LHC! Black holes…
Since the 1990s, we have known that there is a super-massive black hole in every galaxy, and that its mass is proportional to the mass of the bulge. To better understand how these black holes were formed, in symbiosis with their galaxies,…
We examine the production and evolution of microscopic black holes in the early universe in the large extra dimensions scenario. We demonstrate that, unlike in the standard four-dimensional cosmology, in large extra dimensions absorption of…
The formation, accretion and growth of supermassive black holes in the early universe are investigated. The accretion rate ${\dot M}$ is calculated using the Bondi accretion rate onto black holes. Starting with initial seed black holes with…
Supernova theory suggests that black holes of a stellar origin cannot attain masses in the range of 50-135 solar masses in isolation. We argue here that this mass gap is filled in by black holes that grow by gas accretion in dense stellar…
The astrophysical processes that led to the formation of the first seed black holes and to their growth into the supermassive variety that powers bright quasars at redshift 6 are poorly understood. In standard LCDM hierarchical cosmologies,…
Black holes are the elementary particles of gravity, the final state of sufficiently massive stars and of energetic collisions. With a forty-year long history, black hole physics is a fully-blossomed field which promises to embrace several…
The next generation of electromagnetic and gravitational wave observatories will open unprecedented windows to the birth of the first supermassive black holes. This has the potential to reveal their origin and growth in the first billion…
The most massive black holes, lurking at the centers of large galaxies, must have formed less than a billion years after the big bang, as they are visible today in the form of bright quasars at redshift larger than six. Their early…
The growth of black holes and the formation and evolution of galaxies appear to be linked at such a fundamental level that we think of the two as `co-evolving.' Recent observations show that this co-evolution may be complex and the result…