Jillian Bellovary - April 15, 2016

The origin and growth of massive black holes in cosmological simulations

Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) have a ubiquitous presence in massive galaxies,
but their formation and evolutionary history remain mysteries. I will discuss
new work on the formation of SMBH seeds in high-redshift cosmological
simulations, which include the destruction of molecular hydrogen gas by
Lyman-Werner radiation. After formation, SMBH growth is highly dependent on the
properties and accretion history of the host galaxy. The role of galaxy mergers
vs quiescent accretion is still up for debate. I will describe some simulated
galaxies of varying masses and redshifts, and show how SMBH growth depends on
the galaxy evolutionary history. Lastly, I will discuss some outliers in the
SMBH-galaxy relations, and offer some alternative methods of forming and growing
SMBHs which can provide explanations for these interesting objects.