AGN on the Beach

RQ AGN and evolutionary studies

The Mass Assembly of High-Redshift Central Black Holes and the Emergence of Jetted AGN

Olmo Piana

 Fr, 9:45 ! Livein  Palazzo Santa Chiarafor  15min

Recently, multiple questions about the growth of high-redshift supermassive black holes have been raised, regarding their accretion rates, duty cycles, and feedback. Most numerical simulations and semi-analytic models are able to reproduce the available galaxy and BH statistical observables at z~5-6, despite implementing different recipes for BH growth and feedback. Using a semi-analytic model of galaxy evolution in a cosmological context, we aim to break this degeneracy by showing how different BH growth models impact these same observables at z>5. We follow the mass build-up of galaxies covering the wide halo mass range between 10^8 and 10^13.5 solar masses, from z=20 to z=4, and we show how Eddington-limited and super-Eddington accretion models are both consistent with observational properties of SMBH and galaxies at z~5-6, but they become very clearly distinguishable at higher z and in the intermediate mass regime. Our model explicitly includes the interplay between the large-scale galactic gas cycle and BH accretion, so we can study how they influence each other in both scenarios. Adding physically-motivated assumptions on the BH spin and magnetic flux, we can also study the emergence of jetted AGN and their duty cycle.

 Overview  Program