EVOLUTION OF SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES FROM COSMOLOGICAL SIMULATIONS

Abstract

The correlations between the mass of supermassive black holes and the properties of their host galaxies are investigated through cosmological simulations. Black holes grow from seeds of 100 M⊙ are inserted into density peaks presented in the redshift range 12–15. Seeds grow essentially by accreting matter from a nuclear disk and also by coalescences resulting from merger episodes. At z = 0, our simulations reproduce the black hole mass function and the correlations of the black hole mass, both with stellar velocity dispersion and host dark halo mass. Moreover, the evolution of the black hole mass density derived from the present simulations agrees with that derived from the bolometric luminosity of quasars, indicating that the average accretion history of seeds is adequately reproduced. However, our simulations are unable to form black holes with masses above 109 M⊙ at z ~ 6, whose existence is inferred from the bright quasars detected by the Sloan survey in this redshift range.