Scientific Seminars

The cosmological evolution of supermassive black holes

Alessandro Marconi
INAF-OAArcetri

2009-04-29    11:00    Brera - Cupola Fiore

In the last few years it has been realized that supermassive black holes in galactic nuclei are a fundamental ingredient in galaxy evolution. The well known relations between BH mass and host galaxy structural parameters are probably the signature of AGN feedback on host galaxies implying that the cosmological evolution of galaxies cannot be disconnected from the redshift evolution of AGNs and the growth of supermassive black holes. The cosmological evolution of supermassive black holes can be inferred either from measurements of black hole masses in large samples of AGN at all redshifts, or from analysis of the AGN luminosity function. In this talk I will briefly review our current understanding of the redshift evolution of supermassive black holes derived from both methods. I will describe recent advances on virial BH mass measurements and their consequences on BH mass functions from direct measurements. I will then present a new approach to the continuity equation for the black hole mass function which generalizes the method which is now commonly used to analyze the AGN luminosity function and derive BH mass functions.