The origins of massive black holes

M Volonteri, M Habouzit, M Colpi - Nature Reviews Physics, 2021 - nature.com
Massive black holes (MBHs) inhabit galactic centres, and power luminous quasars and
active galactic nuclei, shaping their cosmic environment with the energy they produce. The …

Intermediate-mass black holes

JE Greene, J Strader, LC Ho - Annual Review of Astronomy and …, 2020 - annualreviews.org
We describe ongoing searches for intermediate-mass black holes with M BH≈ 10–105 M⊙.
We review a range of search mechanisms, both dynamical and those that rely on accretion …

JWST CEERS and JADES Active Galaxies at z= 4–7 Violate the Local M•–M⋆ Relation at> 3σ: Implications for Low-mass Black Holes and Seeding Models

F Pacucci, B Nguyen, S Carniani… - The Astrophysical …, 2023 - iopscience.iop.org
JWST is revolutionizing our understanding of the high-z Universe by expanding the black
hole horizon, looking farther and to smaller masses, and revealing the stellar light of their …

Nuclear star clusters

N Neumayer, A Seth, T Böker - The Astronomy and Astrophysics Review, 2020 - Springer
We review the current knowledge about nuclear star clusters (NSCs), the spectacularly
dense and massive assemblies of stars found at the centers of most galaxies. Recent …

Hunting for massive black holes in dwarf galaxies

AE Reines - Nature Astronomy, 2022 - nature.com
Despite traditional thinking, an appreciable population of massive black holes (that is, more
massive than stellar-mass black holes) may be lurking in dwarf galaxies. Before the last …

Light, medium-weight, or heavy? The nature of the first supermassive black hole seeds

F Sassano, R Schneider, R Valiante… - Monthly Notices of …, 2021 - academic.oup.com
Observations of hyper-luminous quasars at z> 6 reveal the rapid growth of supermassive
black holes (SMBHs) whose origin is still difficult to explain. Their progenitors may have …

A search for optical AGN variability in 35,000 low-mass galaxies with the Palomar Transient Factory

VF Baldassare, M Geha, J Greene - The Astrophysical Journal, 2020 - iopscience.iop.org
We present an analysis of the long-term optical variability for∼ 50,000 nearby (z< 0.055)
galaxies from the NASA–Sloan Atlas, 35,000 of which are low-mass (M*< 10 10 M⊙). We …

Diversity of nuclear star cluster formation mechanisms revealed by their star formation histories

K Fahrion, M Lyubenova, G Van De Ven… - Astronomy & …, 2021 - aanda.org
Nuclear star clusters (NSCs) are the densest stellar systems in the Universe and are found
in the centres of all types of galaxies. They are thought to form via mergers of star clusters …

The black hole–bulge mass relation including dwarf galaxies hosting active galactic nuclei

Z Schutte, AE Reines, JE Greene - The Astrophysical Journal, 2019 - iopscience.iop.org
We present a new relationship between central black hole (BH) mass and host galaxy stellar
bulge mass extending to the lowest BH masses known in dwarf galaxies (M BH≲ 10 5 M⊙; …

Probing massive black hole binary populations with LISA

ML Katz, LZ Kelley, F Dosopoulou… - Monthly Notices of …, 2020 - academic.oup.com
ABSTRACT ESA and NASA are moving forward with plans to launch Laser Interferometer
Space Antenna (LISA) around 2034. With data from the Illustris cosmological simulation, we …