The cosmic evolution of massive black holes in the Horizon-AGN simulation

Understand

We analyse the demographics of black holes (BHs) in the large-volume cosmological hydrodynamical simulation Horizon-AGN.

• This simulation statistically models how much gas is accreted onto BHs, traces the energy deposited into their environment and, consequently, the back-reaction of the ambient medium on BH growth.
• The synthetic BHs reproduce a variety of observational constraints such as the redshift evolution of the BH mass density and the mass function.
• Strong self-regulation via AGN feedback, weak supernova feedback, and unresolved internal processes result in a tight BH-galaxy mass correlation.