Black hole formation, growth, and feedback

Over the last decade, we have come to appreciate that supermassive black holes of millions of solar masses and above are commonly hosted by massive galaxies, but are also present in local dwarf galaxies. Black holes are a fundamental component of galaxies and galaxy evolution, but their origin is still far from being understood. I will present several mechanisms to form supermassive black holes in the early Universe, and how we can use cosmological simulations with black hole physics to prepare future space missions such as LynX, JWST, WFIRST.

I will also present recent results from the new IllustrisTNG simulations, particularly the time evolution of the BH and galaxy populations. There has been much debate in the literature to understand the physical mechanisms responsible for quenching massive galaxies, i.e., suppressing star formation in time. I will discuss how this is done in IllustrisTNG, and to what extent it agrees with observational constraints.

Speaker: Melanie Habouzit, CCA