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Observing Supermassive Black Holes Across Cosmic Time: From Phenomenology to Physics

  • Chapter
Astrophysical Black Holes

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Physics ((LNP,volume 905))

Abstract

In the last decade, a combination of high sensitivity and spatial resolution observations and of coordinated multi-wavelength surveys has revolutionized our view of extra-galactic black hole (BH) astrophysics. We now know that supermassive black holes reside in the nuclei of almost every galaxy, grow over cosmological times by accreting matter, interact and merge with each other, and in the process liberate enormous amounts of energy that influence dramatically the evolution of the surrounding gas and stars, providing a powerful self-regulatory mechanism for galaxy formation. The different energetic phenomena associated to growing black holes and Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), their cosmological evolution and the observational techniques used to unveil them, are the subject of this chapter. In particular, I will focus my attention on the connection between the theory of high-energy astrophysical processes giving rise to the observed emission in AGN, the observable imprints they leave at different wavelengths, and the methods used to uncover them in a statistically robust way. I will show how such a combined effort of theorists and observers have led us to unveil most of the SMBH growth over a large fraction of the age of the Universe, but that nagging uncertainties remain, preventing us from fully understating the exact role of black holes in the complex process of galaxy and large-scale structure formation, assembly and evolution.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The Eddington luminosity is defined as \(L_{\mathrm{Edd}} = 4\pi GM_{\mathrm{BH}}m_{\mathrm{p}}c/\sigma _{\mathrm{T}} \simeq 1.3 \times 10^{38}(M_{\mathrm{BH}}/M_{\odot })\) ergs s−1, where G is the Newton constant, m p is the proton mass, c the speed of light and \(\sigma _{\mathrm{T}}\) the Thomson scattering cross section.

  2. 2.

    A Jansky (named after Karl Jansky, who first discovered the existence of radio waves from space) is a flux measure, corresponding to 10−23 ergs cm−2 Hz−1.

  3. 3.

    The “core” of a jet is the brightest innermost region of the jet, where the jet just becomes optically thin to synchrotron self absorption, i.e., the synchrotron photosphere of the jet.

  4. 4.

    Comparison to the steep spectrum luminosity function shows that the error in Φ P from the sources missed under the steep spectrum luminosity function is at most a factor of two.

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Acknowledgements

I thank the editor, Francesco Haardt and all the organizers and students of the SIGRAV PhD school for the generous invitation to write this review and for a great and stimulating environment, during which this work was conceived. I also thank the editors for the patience and endurance they have demonstrated in coping with my delays. This work could not have been possible without the contribution from many collaborators, in particular Angela Bongiorno, Johannes Buchner, Marat Gilfanov, Sebastian Heinz, Marta Volonteri, who provided ideas, suggestions and material for this work. I also thank Philip Best, Murray Brightman, Marcella Brusa, Andrea Comastri, Ivan Delvecchio, Chris Done, Phil Hopkins, Antonis Georgakakis, Gabriele Ghisellini, Roberto Gilli, Kirpal Nandra, Paolo Padovani, Mara Salvato for the useful discussions.

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  1. Max-Planck Institute of Extraterrestrial Physics, Giessenbachstr. 1, 85748, Garching, Germany

    Andrea Merloni

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  1. Andrea Merloni
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Correspondence to Andrea Merloni .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Scienza e Alta Tecnologia, Università degli Studi dell’Insubria, Como, Italy

    Francesco Haardt

  2. Dipartimento di Scienza e Alta Tecnologia, Università degli Studi dell’Insubria, Como, Italy

    Vittorio Gorini

  3. Dipartimento di Scienza e Alta Tecnologia, Università degli Studi dell’Insubria, Como, Italy

    Ugo Moschella

  4. Dipartimento di Scienza e Alta Tecnologia, Università degli Studi dell’Insubria, Como, Italy

    Aldo Treves

  5. Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Milano-Bicocca, Milano, Italy

    Monica Colpi

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Merloni, A. (2016). Observing Supermassive Black Holes Across Cosmic Time: From Phenomenology to Physics. In: Haardt, F., Gorini, V., Moschella, U., Treves, A., Colpi, M. (eds) Astrophysical Black Holes. Lecture Notes in Physics, vol 905. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19416-5_4

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