No Arabic abstract
The purpose of this contribution is to review the current status of black hole demographics in light of recent advances in the study of high redshift QSOs (section 2), local AGNs (section 3) and local quiescent galaxies (section 4). I will then outline the prospects for future progress (section 5), and discuss what I believe will be the challenges for the years to come [ABRIDGED].
We consider black hole - galaxy coevolution using simple analytic arguments. We focus on the fact that several supermassive black holes are known with masses significantly larger than suggested by the $M - {sigma}$ relation, sometimes also with rather small stellar masses. We show that these are likely to have descended from extremely compact `blue nugget galaxies born at high redshift, whose very high velocity dispersions allowed the black holes to reach unusually large masses. Subsequent interactions reduce the velocity dispersion, so the black holes lie above the usual $M - {sigma}$ relation and expel a large fraction of the bulge gas (as in WISE J104222.11+164115.3) that would otherwise make stars, before ending at low redshift as very massive holes in galaxies with relatively low stellar masses, such as NGC 4889 and NGC 1600. We further suggest the possible existence of two new types of galaxy: low-mass dwarfs whose central black holes lie below the $M - {sigma}$ relation at low redshift, and galaxies consisting of very massive ($gtrsim 10^{11}$M$_{odot}$) black holes with extremely small stellar masses. This second group would be very difficult to detect electromagnetically, but potentially offer targets of considerable interest for LISA.
We discuss the critical importance of black hole mass indicators based on scaling relations in active galaxies. We highlight outstanding uncertainties in these methods and potential paths to substantial progress in the next decade.
Precision timing of large arrays (>50) of millisecond pulsars will detect the nanohertz gravitational-wave emission from supermassive binary black holes within the next ~3-7 years. We review the scientific opportunities of these detections, the requirements for success, and the synergies with electromagnetic instruments operating in the 2020s.
We characterise the population of wandering black holes, defined as those physically offset from their halo centres, in the Romulus cosmological simulations. Unlike most other currently available cosmological simulations, black holes are seeded based on local gas properties and are permitted to evolve dynamically without being fixed at halo centres. Tracking these black holes allows us to make robust predictions about the offset population. We find that the number of wandering black holes scales roughly linearly with the halo mass, such that we expect thousands of wandering black holes in galaxy cluster halos. Locally, these wanderers account for around 10 per cent of the local black hole mass budget once seed masses are accounted for. Yet for higher redshifts ($zgtrsim 4$), wandering black holes both outweigh and outshine their central supermassive counterparts. Most wandering black holes, we find, remain close to the seed mass and originate from the centres of previously disrupted satellite galaxies. While most do not retain a resolved stellar counterpart, those that do are situated farther out at larger fractions of the virial radius. Wanderers with higher luminosities are preferentially at lower radius, more massive, and either closer to their hosts mid-planes or associated with a stellar overdensity. This analysis shows that our current census of supermassive black holes is incomplete and that a substantial population of off-centre wanderers likely exists.
(abridged) We analyze and model HST /STIS observations of a sample of 27 galaxies; 16 Fanaroff & Riley Type I radio galaxies and 11 (more) normal early-type galaxies. We focus here on what can be learned from the nuclear velocity dispersion (line width) of the gas as a complement to the many studies dealing with gas rotation velocities. We find that the dispersion in a STIS aperture of ~0.1-0.2 generally exceeds the large-scale stellar velocity dispersion of the galaxy. This is qualitatively consistent with the presence of central BHs, but raises the question whether the excess gas dispersion is of gravitational or non-gravitational origin and whether the implied BH masses are consistent with our current understanding of BH demography(as predicted by the M-sigma relation between BH mass and stellar velocity dispersion). To address this we construct dynamical models for the gas, both thin disk models and models with more general axis ratios and velocity anisotropies. For the normal galaxies the nuclear gas dispersions are adequately reproduced assuming disks around BHs with masses that follow the M-sigma relation. In contrast, the gas dispersions observed for the radio galaxies generally exceed those predicted by any of the models. We attribute this to the presence of non-gravitational motions in the gas that are similar to or larger than the gravitational motions. The non- gravitational motions are presumably driven by the active galactic nucleus (AGN), but we do not find a relation between the radiative output of the AGN and the non-gravitational dispersion. It is not possible to uniquely determine the BH mass for each galaxy from its nuclear gas dispersion. However, for the sample as a whole the observed dispersions do not provide evidence for significant deviations from the M-sigma relation.